Submitted by Brian Tashman on Wednesday, 8/31/2011 12:40 pm
Mike Huckabee is scheduled to be the featured speaker at a fundraiser for Personhood Mississippi, the group running the campaign to pass Amendment 26, which would criminalize abortion with no exceptions by giving rights to zygotes. In addition to banning abortion, the personhood amendment would also make certain forms of birth control, in-vitro fertilization and the treatment of problem pregnancies a crime. The American Family Association, which is based in Mississippi, committed $100,000 to fund the effort to pass Amendment 26 in November.
By supporting Amendment 26, Huckabee places himself even to the right of the National Right to Life Committee, which refused to back Colorado’s failed personhood amendment because they thought it was counter-productive and likely to be struck down as unconstitutional.
Moreover, the founder and director of Personhood Mississippi is far-right extremist Les Riley. Riley used to be a featured blogger for the Christian separatist group Christian Exodus, until his posts were conspicuously removed from the group’s site. But luckily, he left a paper trail:
According to Christian Exodus’s mission statement, “The initial goal was to move thousands of Christian constitutionalists to South Carolina to accelerate the return to self-government based upon Christian principles at the local and State level. This project continues to this day, with the ultimate goal of forming an independent Christian nation that will survive after the decline and fall of the financially and morally bankrupt American empire.”
Riley is also chairman of the Constitution Party of Mississippi and stated that its goal is to “restore American government to its Constiutional [sic] limits and American jurisprudence to its Biblical presuppositions.” According to their platform, “The U.S. Constitution established a Republic rooted in Biblical law.”
Submitted by Kyle Mantyla on Wednesday, 8/31/2011 10:44 am
Yesterday, the Pew Research Center for People and the Press released a survey that found that "Muslims in the United States continue to reject extremism" and that there is "no indication of increased alienation or anger among Muslim Americans in response to concerns about home-grown Islamic terrorists, controversies about the building of mosques and other pressures that have been brought to bear on this high-profile minority group in recent years."
But Bryan Fischer, of course, wasn't buying it at all and dedicated a segment of his radio program yesterday to warning that the survey showed that nearly half of Muslims identify themselves as Muslims first and Americans second. Of course, Christians do the same thing but, as Fischer explained, it is a good thing when Christians do it and a bad thing when Muslims do it:
Nearly half of Muslims in the US say that they think of themselves first as Muslims rather than Americans. Now that's a problem. It's not a problem when a Christian says that. For the Christian to say "I am a Christian first and an American second," that's what we all ought to say. Our ultimate allegiance is not to country, not to the Constitution, it's to God and the the Scripture. If you have to make a choice between the two, we must obey God rather than man.
But when a Christan says "I'm a Christian first and an American second," the fact that he is a Christian first, he's got devotion and allegiance to Jesus Christ means he's going to be a better American. He's going to be an asset to his country, he's going to love his country, he's going to become more fervent in his patriotism. His love for his country and for its traditions are going to deepen because those traditions are rooted in the soil of the Judeo-Christian tradition.
Now if you have a Muslim, on the other hand, that says that - "I am a Muslim first and an American second" - look out! Because that indicates his ultimate devotion is to the Quran, it's to Allah, it's to Muhammad. It's not to Jesus Christ, it's not to the Judeo-Christian tradition, it is not to American values and American tradition and American history and American heroes - it is to Allah and Allah tells him to slay the idolaters wherever you find them.
So the more devout a Muslim gets, the more of a threat he becomes to America's nation security.
So there you have it: being a Christian makes you a better American while being a non-Christian makes you a threat to this nation.
Submitted by Brian Tashman on Monday, 8/29/2011 2:42 pm
Frank Turek has become a hero of sorts to the Religious Right after Cisco terminated his contract as a consultant when an employee complained about his work as an anti-gay activist. Turek, who was a motivational speaker for Cisco before he was canned, is a radio commentator on American Family Radio, the American Family Association’s far-right radio network, and is the author of Correct, Not Politically Correct: How Same-Sex Marriage Hurts Everyone. He also frequently appears on broadcasts from Rick Joyner’s the Oak Initiative and joined Joyner, Tony Perkins and Jerry Boykin to create the Religious Right’s own '300' Spartan army. While a guest on Bryan Fischer’s AFR radio show in May, Turek warned that gay rights advocates and Islamic extremists are “in concert together” because “they both hate Western Civilization” and “hate Judeo-Christian natural law values that our Constitution and particularly our Declaration of Independence.”
Turek now writes columns for the American Family Association. In his latest piece, he claims that the people who truly love gay people are the ones like him, who believe they should become ‘ex-gays,’ while the people who hate gay people are those who affirm their sexual orientation. “If I have good reason to think you are on the road to destruction—if a truck is about to run over you,” Turek writes, “the only way to love you is to urge you to get out of the street”:
Everyone puts limits on marriage—if marriage had no definition it wouldn’t be anything. Recognizing that marriage is between a man and a woman is not bigotry, but common sense rooted in the biological facts of nature. That’s why the state recognizes marriage to begin with—not because two people love one another but because only heterosexual unions can procreate and best nurture the next generation.
Everyone also puts limits on behaviors. But opposing behavior is not the same as opposing or “hating” people. In fact, to really love people, we often have to oppose what they do! Parents know this, and all former children know it as well.
Celebrating behavior that leads to disease and an early death is closer to hate than love. According to the latest data from the Center for Disease Control, homosexual men comprise more than 80 percent of sexually transmitted HIV cases despite comprising less than 2 percent of the population. The FDA says that men who have sex with men have an HIV infection rate 60 times higher than the general population. Why should we be encouraging behavior that results in such tragic outcomes? If I have good reason to think you are on the road to destruction—if a truck is about to run over you—the only way to love you is to urge you to get out of the street. If I tell you to keep walking down that road—that I celebrate the road you’re on—how could I hate you more?
But isn’t homosexuality like race? No. Race has nothing to do with behavior, but homosexuality is a behavior! Skin color affects no one, but destructive behavior affects many. Moreover, sexual behavior is always a choice, race never is. You’ll find many former homosexuals, but you’ll never find a former African-American.
So if you don’t approve of a man because of his race, you are a bigot. But if you don’t approve of a man’s destructive behavior, you are wise.
…
[B]eing born a certain way is irrelevant to what the law should be. Laws are concerned with behaviors not desires, and we all have desires we ought not act on. In fact, all of us were born with an “orientation” to bad behavior, but those desires don’t justify the behaviors. If you are born with a genetic predisposition to alcohol, does that mean you should be an alcoholic? If you have a genetic attraction to children does that mean you should be a pedophile? What homosexual activist would say that a genetic predisposition to anger justifies gay-bashing? (Don’t blame me—I was born with the anti-gay gene!) Certainly, those that oppose alcoholism, pedophilia and gay bashing are not “bigots”—they are wise.
Submitted by Brian Tashman on Wednesday, 8/24/2011 3:29 pm
In her latest column, Renew America’s Sher Zieve floats the idea that President Obama might be a demon. Zieve, who last posited that Obama was the Beast of the Book of Revelation, argues that “Shari’a is only a short step away” in the United States if Obama continues to lead his “dictatorial police state” and YouTube keeps "censoring and removing all videos that do not support Islamic worldwide domination." She concludes her column by wondering if Obama has said “that his name is really Legion,” the name of the group of demons Jesus casts out of a man in the New Testament.
We are now living in a dictatorial Police State that is completely lawless — save the laws Obama and his DOJ are making up on the spot as they so choose. And Congress and the leftist courts are doing nothing — whatsoever — to stop it.
…
The US Congress is certainly not blameless and is now composed almost entirely of Marxist-Leninist Democrats and RINO Marxist wannabees..or followers. Congress' John Boehner, Mitch McConnell et al are not only going-along-to-get-along but, are now overtly supporting the tyrant. Not only did they push to give Obama virtually everything he demanded but, they appear to be supporting the Obama and NWO contingent in their plans to overthrow virtually all Middle Eastern — even semi-secular (albeit brutal) — governments within a close proximity to Israel and replace them with Muslim Brotherhood rulers. It is already happening in Egypt, has begun in Libya and has all of the now known earmarks of starting in Syria. Heck, Obama is installing Muslim Brotherhood members as quickly as possible into the US government. Shari'a is only a short step away, folks. YouTube has already started censoring and removing all videos that do not support Islamic worldwide domination.
Note: Remember that the Muslim Brotherhood is the foundation organization that spawned al-Qaeda, Hamas and most other Islamic terrorist groups.
If our country hasn't been totally destroyed before then, we must — I repeat MUST — rid ourselves of the perfidy that now infests virtually every aspect of our government. Those who refuse to support and protect the US Constitution must be summarily ousted from their warm Congressional chairs and replaced with Constitutionalist who will. For example, have replacements for Rep. John Boehner and Sen. Mitch McConnell been identified? If not, isn't it time to begin...now?
By the way, has Obama said yet that his name is really Legion? Just wondering...
Mark 5:7-10
7And cried with a loud voice, and said, What have I to do with thee, Jesus, thou Son of the most high God? I adjure thee by God, that thou torment me not.
8For he said unto him, Come out of the man, thou unclean spirit.
9And he asked him, What is thy name? And he answered, saying, My name is Legion: for we are many.
Submitted by Brian Tashman on Thursday, 8/18/2011 11:37 am
A secretive ‘Super PAC’ tied to an Ohio political operative is planning to aid congresswoman Michele Bachmann’s presidential campaign after working to defeat South Carolina congressman John Spratt in the last midterm election. Chris Cillizza writes that “Citizens for a Working America, as the group is known, will be chaired by former Ohio Secretary of State Ken Blackwell. Ed Brookover, a longtime political consultant and adviser to Bachmann, will be involved as will conservative lawyer and economist Marc Nuttle.”
Ken Blackwell’s ties to the Religious Right are well known, but Nuttle’s activism has flown below the radar.
Blackwell was Ohio’s Secretary of State from 2002-2006 whom after leaving office, unsuccessfully ran for governor in 2006 and chairman of the Republican National Committee in 2009. He is now a senior fellow with the ultraconservative Family Research Council, a senior fellow with the far-right American Civil Rights Union, and a board member the pro-corporate Club for Growth. Columbus-based televangelist Rod Parsley vigorously backed his failed gubernatorial campaign and Religious Right activists endorsed his abortive bid for RNC chair. His staunchly anti-gay views will serve him well in the Bachmann camp, as Blackwell once compared gay people with arsonists and kleptomaniacs and same-sex couples with farm animals.
Nuttle is a Republican adviser and economist with deep ties to an extreme movement within the Religious Right composed of advocates of Seven Mountains Dominionism. Nuttle is in fact Chairman of The Oak Initiative, a far-right organization dedicated to promoting the Seven Mountains ideology. The group claims in its mission statement, “The Oak Institute is being developed to raise up effective leaders for all of the dominant areas of influence in the culture, including: government, business, education, arts and entertainment, family services, media, and the church,” otherwise known as the Seven Mountains of society that Dominionists think should be controlled by fundamentalist Christians.
Nuttle spoke to Joyner’s MorningStar Ministries on how to “apply proper biblical principles to the marketplace and the workforce” and that God “has a plan and a solution for this current world crisis we find ourselves in.” Nuttle said that people “don’t have to figure” out all the economic solutions, “all you have to do is be obedient” to God. He also claimed that the United States is the only country with a government subservient to God: “Every other government in the world is some sort of government authority, it’s a dictatorship, or Islam where government is God, or where the dictator is God, or the Constitution is God, over the constituents.” Nuttle argued that “the fight is against the 30% [of politicians] who don’t care” about the decline of the economy, “because then there’s more room for government. Government’s what they want, socialism is the goal.” He ended his speech by saying, “lock your shields with each other against the enemy.”
Earlier this year he addressed Liberty University’s Awakening 2011, the Religious Right political event hosted by Mat Staver of the LU-affiliate Liberty Counsel. Nuttle also appeared on God Knows with Jacobs, where he shared with the 'Prophet' his plan to solve the nation’s debt troubles.
As heads of the pro-Bachmann Super PAC, Blackwell and Nuttle will surely help Bachmann link her far-right economic views with her deep-seated social conservative activism.
America’s Founders disagreed how broadly the First Amendment extended Freedom of Religion. Since James Madison, known as the Father of the Bill of Rights, insured that the Congressional debates over the Bill of Rights were conducted in secret, Americans must look to later sources to understand the positions taken by their Founders. Thomas Jefferson and Supreme Court Justice Joseph Story, whom Madison appointed to the Supreme Court and who later founded Harvard Law School, openly debated over the place of Christianity in American law. Jefferson advocated a broad view that that all religions, not merely variations of Christianity, were to be protected. In his autobiography Jefferson wrote:
[When] the [Virginia] bill for establishing religious freedom... was finally passed,... a singular proposition proved that its protection of opinion was meant to be universal. Where the preamble declares that coercion is a departure from the plan of the holy author of our religion, an amendment was proposed, by inserting the word 'Jesus Christ,' so that it should read 'a departure from the plan of Jesus Christ, the holy author of our religion.' The insertion was rejected by a great majority, in proof that they meant to comprehend within the mantle of its protection the Jew and the Gentile, the Christian and Mahometan, the Hindoo and infidel of every denomination.
Joseph Story stated a contradictory view in his Commentaries on the Constitution of the United States:
The real object of the [First] amendment was, not to countenance, much less to advance Mahometanism, or Judaism, or infidelity, by prostrating Christianity; but to exclude all rivalry among Christian sects, and to prevent any national ecclesiastical establishment, which should give to an hierarchy the exclusive patronage of the national government.”
Jefferson’s position has ultimately prevailed; under American law all religions enjoy freedom from government interference. However Joseph Story’s view continues to have proponents, including Bryan Fischer, one of American Family Radio’s talk show hosts. However, the American Family Association (“AFA”) officially sides with Jefferson on this question. AFA is confident that the truth of Christianity will prevail whenever it is allowed to freely compete in the marketplace of ideas.
As we have said time and again, it is amazing how the AFA can pay Fischer, publish his writings and give him two-hour daily radio platform from which to spout his relentless stream of bigotry yet continue to claim that Fischer's views ought to in no way reflect upon the organization.
Name one other organization that regularly has to declare that the things said by its own spokesman should not be construed as reflecting the views of the organization itself.
Submitted by Kyle Mantyla on Monday, 8/15/2011 11:15 am
On today's episode of "Faith and Freedom Radio," Mat Staver and Matt Barber spent all of their time railing against the fact that the United States had reportedly withheld $350 million in aid to the country of Malawi due to efforts in that country to outlaw homosexuality.
Like the Family Research Council before them, Barber and Staver were outraged that the United States would be using economic extortion to impose its own immorality on a sovereign nation like Malawi which simply seeks to uphold God's laws by imprisoning gays:
Barber: What we need is to return to your moral grounding and moral roots in this nation. Until we do that, the moral and the economic are definitely combined and our nation is going to continue to sink, we're going to continue to lose our status in the world as the world leader. And frankly, when we are holding out nations hostage to a radical, sexually-immoral agenda, I don't know that we necessarily are in a position - at least the government as its stands right now under this administration - are in a position to claim to be the world's moral leaders.
Staver: We're not the world's moral leader under this administration; we're one of the world's immoral leaders ... What the administration is doing is just putting its own immoral views into its funding, trying to get other nations to come around and do the same thing. And they're literally trying to create and extend this immorality globally.
Barber: The Obama administration is saying that sexual perversion is a human right.
Staver: More than sixty countries have laws criminalizing homosexuality and virtually every country in the world has laws that criminalize pedophilia and child incest. Malawi was doing what it was doing in its own best interest and America should not be trying to make that country act in an immoral way.
I think that maybe we should point out that, earlier this year, Michele Bachmann personally tapped Staver to come to Washington to teach her Tea Party on the Constitution.
Submitted by Kyle Mantyla on Friday, 8/12/2011 12:17 pm
When Gov. Rick Perry took to the stage at his prayer rally last weekend, he brought with him two close friends: C.L Jackson and Alice Patterson, whom he publicly praised and thanked:
Patterson, as you may recall, is deeply involved in the New Apostloic Reformation where she focuses on "racial healing" in order to get African Americans to leave the Democratic Party, which she believes is literally controlled by demonic spirits.
As it turns out, not only is the Democratic Party controlled by such spirits, but the Republican Party is as well. But whereas the Democrats are controled by "Jezebel" via a "network of demonic principalities that demanded allegiance, worship, and the shedding of innocent blood," the Republicans are controlled by "Ahab" which makes GOP leaders passive and yield to intimidation instead of standing up on Godly principles.
In fact, Patterson explains in her book how it was this very spirit of passivity that caused prayer to be removed in school, which resulted in the murder to President Kennedy:
Passivity caused the court cases that removed prayer from our public schools to remain, causing the protective wall around the United States, our schools and our government to crumble. The very next year President John Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas. The country mourned but the protective walls were not restored.
Patterson warns that "the further you get up the ladder in Washington, D. C. or state government, the harder it is to withstand the power of the Ahab structure if you’re a Republican" ... which is why President George W. Bush did so many ungodly things, like appointing "an open homosexual to high office," meeting with Muslims, and failing to pass a federal marriage amendment:
Although the Republican Party Platform is full of virtue, many individual Republicans tolerate what the platform does not. Take former evangelical President George W. Bush. Here are just a few of his actions that align with King Ahab’s tolerance of Jezebel.
• He was the first Republican President to appoint an open homosexual to high office— Scott Evertz to the White House Office of National AIDS Policy.
• After the Islamic terrorist attack on the Twin Towers on 9/11/2001, President Bush invited 50 ambassadors from Muslim countries for a traditional meal and prayer at the White House in November 2001 to mark the start of Ramadan. A Republican President was the first to invite Muslims to pray in the White House. President Barack Obama continued the celebration of Ramadan in the White House, but it was started by a Republican President.
• President and Mrs. Bush bowed before the Meiji Shrine in Tokyo.
• President Bush “removed his shoes, entered a mosque and praised Islam for inspiring ‘countless individuals to lead lives of honesty, integrity and morality.’ For the second time since the September 11 terrorist attacks, the president yesterday visited Washington’s oldest mosque, the Islamic Center, where Muslims from 75 nations gather to worship. Bush marked the end of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan by praising Islam as a hopeful religion of mercy and tolerance.”
• President Bush outraged evangelicals by stating that he believes that Christians and Muslims worship the same god.
• In 2004 President Bush campaigned in favor of a Marriage Amendment to the U.S. Constitution that says that marriage is between one man and one woman. However, when he was elected, he said no more about it. If he had put as much importance on it as he did in reforming Social Security, the Marriage Amendment would have passed through Congress. He even said on several occasions that he supported civil unions, which give the same rights as marriage to same-sex couples.
• President Bush proved over and over again that he was an Ahab.
Submitted by Brian Tashman on Wednesday, 8/10/2011 4:53 pm
David Barton dedicated today’s program of WallBuilders Live to discuss a case in Texas where a woman was convicted of causing injury to a child. “It was her daughter's grandmother who noticed red marks on the child’s rear end, and took her to Driscoll Children's Hospital to be checked out,” reports the local NBC affiliate KZTV, saying the mother “plead guilty to the charge after reaching an agreement with prosecutors.” The office of the state’s Attorney General explains that “corporal punishment can be extremely damaging and dangerous, and this is what the law prohibits as abuse,” and local prosecutors and courts have discretion in handling such cases.
Barton argues that a judge had no right to convict her because, he explained, the Bible justifies and even encourages spanking. He claims that if anything parents should spank their children not with their hands but with “belts or hairbrushes, or they can use a paddle or whatever it is,” because “always in the Bible discipline is with a rod, it’s not with a hand.” Barton goes on to say “we do the same thing with horses,” saying spanking children is like beating horses with a rod or crop.
The right-wing pseudo-historian blames evolution as the culprit for the diminishment of spanking, maintaining that the application of evolution already ruined our understanding of the Constitution, science, and history, and is now set to destroy traditional parenting:
Barton: Always in the Bible, discipline is with a rod, it’s not with a hand. ’Cause the hand is supposed to reach out in love, you don’t want kids flinching from your hand. We do the same thing with horses. When I reach my hand to the face of a horse, I don’t want to flinch him from my hand. So if I have to beat a horse, and occasionally I do, you take something like a switch or a little crop or something else. And you can’t hurt a horse, I mean you can, but you have to convince a 1,200 lbs horse that me at 150 lbs is tougher than you and you do that by training. But when I extend my hand to my horse he doesn’t run from my hand, now he may not like that crop if he sees it, but after he’s had it a few time he’ll do exactly what I want, we have no difficulty, that’s why you also use spurs at times.
So the deal with spanking with hands, that’s why you really don’t want to do that you want to use something else so your hand is always associated with love and tenderness and reaching out to kids, there’s nothing to flinch, so people use belts or hairbrushes, or they can use a paddle or whatever it is.
…
When you say something ‘your yea’s should be yeas, your nay’s nays,’ say something, if they don’t follow through, no anger needed, there’s just a penalty to pay for it. A consequence.
So, you get this thing where we have now moved into applying evolution to parenting. Now we’ve already applied evolution to the Constitution, we’ve applied evolution to science, we’ve applied evolution to history, that’s why we don’t teach history, we teach culture. Not any of the of the fifty major universities in America, elite universities require any course in history, they all teach culture, not history. So we’ve applied evolution. Now we’re applying evolution to parenting, and ‘you don’t spank.’
Wait a minute, the Bible says I do. You mean we evolved past the Bible? That’s what you getting. As you can tell I’m exercised over this one.
Submitted by Kyle Mantyla on Wednesday, 8/10/2011 12:50 pm
I always thought that when conservatives used the phrase "states' rights," it meant that the federal government was to have limited powers and the individual states were to have the right to decide how to legislate issues for themselves.
Once upon a time, Gov. Rick Perry was a supporter of that idea ... until he decided he wanted to run for president and realized that "states' rights" meant that states could recognize marriage equality and a woman's right to choose.
Seeing as such things are diametrically opposed to the agenda of the Religious Right base he needs to court to win the GOP nomination, Perry quickly flip-flopped on that position, announcing his support for constitutional amendments to outlaw both abortion and gay marriage.
But make no mistake, Perry's cowardly pandering has not gone unnoticed by those he seeks to court ... but don't imagine that they are holding it against him becuse they are not. In fact, Bryan Fischer is praising and defending Perry for taking this stand by unveiling a rather novel new definition of what the term "states' rights" really means:
Gov. Rick Perry has been castigated by some conservatives and 10th Amendment aficionados for his public support of federal amendments to protect the sanctity of life and the sanctity of marriage.
They accuse him of abandoning his commitment to federalism, states’ rights, and the 10th Amendment and committing unpardonable Tea Party heresy in the process
But to consider amending the federal Constitution as an abandonment of the 10th Amendment and states’ rights absurd.
You can’t get any more “states’ rights” than amending the Constitution, for one simple reason: only the states can amend the Constitution in the first place.
Unless proponents can get voters in 38 states to agree with them, our supreme legal document remains unchanged.
When the Constitution is amended, this is the exact opposite of the federal government imposing something on the states, but is rather a manifestation of the states expressing their political will. If anything, it’s the states imposing something on the federal government. Everybody ought to get pumped up about doing something like that.
So it turns out that "states' rights" doesn't mean that the states have the right to decide the issues as they see fit, but rather that the majority of the states have the right to decide what the minority must do.
Is this any surprise, coming from a man who doesn't believe the First Amendment covers non-Christians?
Submitted by Kyle Mantyla on Monday, 8/8/2011 10:51 am
Ryan Lizza has a long profile in the new issue of The New Yorker in which he explains that "Bachmann's views have been shaped by institutions, tracts, and leaders not commonly known to secular Americans, or even to most Christians" and that "her campaign is going to be a conversation about a set of beliefs more extreme than those of any American politician of her stature."
As Lizza explains, one of the people who played a key role in shaping Bachmann's views was John Eidsmoe, her professor at Oral Roberts Univeristy:
At Oral Roberts, Bachmann worked for a professor named John Eidsmoe, who got her interested in the burgeoning homeschool movement. She helped him build a database of state homeschooling statutes, assisting his crusade to reverse laws that prevented parents from homeschooling their children. After that, Bachmann worked as Eidsmoe’s research assistant on his book “Christianity and the Constitution,” published in 1987.
Eidsmoe explained to me how the Coburn School of Law, in the years that Bachmann was there, wove Christianity into the legal curriculum. “Say we’re talking in criminal law, and we get to the subject of the insanity defense,” he said. “Well, Biblically speaking, is there such a thing as insanity and is it a defense for a crime? We might look back to King David when he’s captured by the Philistines and he starts frothing at the mouth, playing crazy and so on.” When Biblical law conflicted with American law, Eidsmoe said, O.R.U. students were generally taught that “the first thing you should try to do is work through legal means and political means to get it changed.”
“Christianity and the Constitution” is ostensibly a scholarly work about the religious beliefs of the Founders, but it is really a brief for political activism. Eidsmoe writes that America “was and to a large extent still is a Christian nation,” and that “our culture should be permeated with a distinctively Christian flavoring.” When I asked him if he believed that Bachmann’s views were fully consistent with the prevailing ideology at O.R.U. and the themes of his book, he said, “Yes.” Later, he added, “I do not know of any way in which they are not.”
Eidsmoe has stirred controversy. In 2005, he spoke at the national convention of the Council of Conservative Citizens, a defiantly pro-white, and anti-black, organization. (Eidsmoe says that he deeply despises racism, but that he will speak “to anyone.”) In Alabama last year, he addressed an event commemorating Secession Day and told an interviewer that it was the state’s “constitutional right to secede,” and that “Jefferson Davis and John C. Calhoun understood the Constitution better than did Abraham Lincoln and Daniel Webster.” In April, 2010, he was disinvited from a Tea Party rally in Wausau, Wisconsin, because of these statements and appearances.
Bachmann has not, however, distanced herself, and she has long described her work for Eidsmoe as an important part of her résumé. This spring, she told a church audience in Iowa, “I went down to Oral Roberts University, and one of the professors that had a great influence on me was an Iowan named John Eidsmoe. He’s from Iowa, and he’s a wonderful man. He has theology degrees, he has law degrees, he’s absolutely brilliant. He taught me about so many aspects of our godly heritage.”
Submitted by Miranda Blue on Friday, 8/5/2011 7:14 pm
Updated 8/5/2011
On August 6, Texas Gov. Rick Perry will host The Response, a “prayer rally” in Houston, along with the extremist American Family Association and a cohort of Religious Right leaders with far-right political ties. While the rally’s leaders label it a "a non-denominational, apolitical Christian prayer meeting," the history of the groups behind it suggests otherwise. The Response is powered by politically active Religious Right individuals and groups who are dedicated to bringing far-right religious view, including degrading views of gays and lesbians and non-Christians, into American politics.
In fact, a spokesman for The Response has said that while non-Christians will be welcomed at the rally, they will be urged to “seek out the living Christ.” Allan Parker, a right-wing activist who participated in an organizing conference call for the event, declared in an email bearing the official Response logo that including non-Christians in the event "would be idolatry of the worst sort."
Perry told James Dobson that the rally was necessary because Americans have “turned away from God.”
The following is an introduction to the groups and individuals who Gov. Perry has allied himself with in planning this event.
The American Family Association
The American Family Association is the driving force behind The Response. Founded by the Rev. Don Wildmon in 1977, the organization is based is best known for its various boycott campaigns, promotion of art censorship, and political advocacy against women’s rights and LGBT equality. The organization also controls the vast American Family Radio and an online news service, in addition to sponsoring various conferences frequented by Republican leaders, including the Values Voter Summit and Rediscovering God in America. The AFA today is led by Tim Wildmon, Don’s son, and its chief spokesperson is Bryan Fischer, the Director of Issues Analysis for Government and Public Policy and host of its flagship radio show Focal Point.
Fischer routinely expresses support for some of the most bigoted and shocking ideas found in the Religious Right today. He has:
said that the anti-Muslim manifesto of the right-wing Christian terrorist who killed dozens in Norway was “accurate.”
Other AFA leaders and activists are just as radical:
AFA President Tim Wildmon claims that by repealing Don’t Ask Don’t Tell President Obama shows he “doesn’t give a rip about the Marines or the Army” and “just wants to force homosexuality into every place that he can.”
AFA Vice President Buddy Smith, who is on the leadership council of The Response, said that gays and lesbians are “in the clasp of Satan.”
The Response’s leadership team includes five senior staff members of the International House of Prayer (IHOP), a large, highly political Pentecostal organization built on preparing participants for the return of Jesus Christ. In a recent video, IHOP encouraged supporters to pray for Jews to convert to Christianity in order to bring about the Second Coming. IHOP is closely associated with Lou Engle, a Religious Right leader whose anti-gay, anti-choice extremism hasn’t stopped him from hobnobbing with Republican leaders including Newt Gingrich, Michele Bachmann and Mike Huckabee. Engle is the founder of The Call, day-long rallies against abortion rights and gay marriage, which Engle says are meant to break Satan’s control over the U.S. government. One recent Call event featured “prophet” Cindy Jacobs calling for repentance for the “girl-on-girl kissing” of Britney Spears and Madonna. Perry's The Response event is clearly built upon Engle's The Call model.
Engle has a long history of pushing extreme right-wing views and advocating for a conservative theocracy in America. Engle:
IHOP’s founder and executive director, Mike Bickle, who is an official endorser of The Response, like Engle pushes radical End Times prophesies. In one sermon, he declared that Oprah Winfrey is a precursor to the Antichrist.
The International House of Prayer, incidentally, remains locked in a copyright infringement lawsuit with the International House of Pancakes.
Tony Perkins
Tony Perkins, president of the Family Research Council, is a co-chairman of The Response. At the FRC, Perkins has been a vocal opponent of LGBT equality, often relying on false claims about gay people to push his agenda. He:
denied that there was a correlation between anti-gay bullying and depression and suicide, saying instead that gay and lesbian teens know they are “abnormal” and “have a higher propensity to depression or suicide because of that internal conflict";
One of the most prominent members of The Response’s leadership team is pastor Jim Garlow. The pastor for a San Diego megachurch, Garlow has been intimately involved in political battles, especially the campaign to pass Proposition 8. Garlow invited and housed Lou Engle to lead The Call rallies around California for six months to sway voters to support Proposition 8, which would repeal the right of gay and lesbian couples to get married. He claims Satan is behind the “attack on marriage” and credits the prayer rallies for the passage of Prop 8. He said that during a massive The Call rally in San Diego’s Qualcomm Stadium “something had snapped in the Heavenlies” and “God had moved” to deliver Prop 8 to victory.
Most importantly, Garlow is a close spiritual adviser to presidential candidate Newt Gingrich and leads Gingrich’s Renewing American Leadership (ReAL). Garlow is a principal advocate of Seven Mountains Dominionism, and wants to “bring armies of people” to bring Religious Right leaders into public office and defeat their political opponents.
likened homosexuality to bestiality, saying that if marriage equality is upheld “the next court case could conceivably say that if three people wanted to marry or four people or five people or if someone wanted to marry their dog or their horse”;
While Senator John McCain rejected John Hagee’s endorsement during the 2008 presidential campaign for his “deeply offensive and indefensible” remarks, Perry invited Hagee to join The Response. Hagee leads a megachurch in San Antonio, Texas, and is a purveyor of End Times prophesies. Like members of the International House of Prayer, Hagee utilizes language of spiritual warfare and says he is part of “the army of the living God.” He runs the prominent group Christians United For Israel, which believes that eventually a cataclysmic war in the Middle East will bring about the Rapture.
John McCain was forced to disavow Hagee for a reason as the Texas pastor:
claimed that God sent Hitler to be a “hunter” of Jews to usher in the establishment of Israel and “do God’s work,” lamenting that Jews are no longer “spiritually alive.”
referred to the Catholic Church as ‘The Great Whore,’ an ‘apostate church,’ the ‘anti-Christ,’ and a ‘false cult system.’
said that God won’t allow the United States to win wars anymore because “we have allowed the worship of Satanism in the U.S. military.”
James Dobson
James Dobson, an official endorser of The Response, is one of the most prominent figures in the Religious Right. Founder of both Focus on the Family and the Family Research Council , Dobson has been instrumental in bringing the priorities of the Religious Right to Republican politics, including campaigning hard for President George W. Bush. But many of the views that Dobson pushes are hardly mainstream. Dobson:
insists that the Religious Right’s fight against Planned Parenthood is “very similar” to that of abolitionists who fought against the slave trade.
Asked if God had withdrawn his hand from America after 9/11, Dobson responded: “Christians have made arguments on both sides of this question. I certainly believe that God is displeased with America for its pride and arrogance, for killing 40 million unborn babies, for the universality of profanity and for other forms of immorality. However, rather than trying to forge a direct cause-and-effect relationship between the terrorist attacks and America's abandonment of biblical principles, which I think is wrong, we need to accept the truth that this nation will suffer in many ways for departing from the principles of righteousness. "The wages of sin is death," as it says in Romans 6, both for individuals and for entire cultures.”
David Barton
David Barton, an official endorser of The Response, is a self-proclaimed historian known for his twisting of American History and the Bible to justify right-wing political positions. Barton’s strategy is twofold: he first works to find Biblical bases for right-wing policy initiatives, and then argues that the Founding Fathers wanted the United States to be a Christian nation, so obviously wanted whatever policy he has just found a flimsy Biblical basis for. Barton, “documenting” the divine origins of his interpretations of the Constitution gives him and his political allies a potent weapon. Opponents who disagree about tax policy or the powers of Congress are not only wrong, they are un-American and anti-religious, enemies of America and of God.
Barton uses his shoddy historical and biblical scholarship to push a right-wing political agenda, including:
Biblical Capitalism: Barton’s “scholarship” helps to form the basis for far-right economic policies. He claims that “Jesus was against the minimum wage,” that the Bible “absolutely condemned” the estate tax,” and opposed the progressive income tax.
Revising Racial History: Barton has traveled the country peddling a documentary he made blaming the Democratic Party for slavery, lynching and Jim Crow…while ignoring more recent history.
Opposing Gay Rights: Barton believes the government should regulate gay sex and maintains that countries which “rejected sexual regulation” inevitably collapse.
Other Allies
Among the other far-right figures who have signed on to work with Gov. Perry on The Response are:
Rob Schenk, an anti-choice extremist who was once arrested for throwing a fetus in the face of President Clinton, and who allegedly had ties with the murderer of abortion provider Dr. Barnett Slepian.
Loren Cunningham, who is working to mobilize support for the rally is a co-founder of the radical “Seven Mountains Dominionist” ideology. Cunningham says that he received the “seven mountains” idea, which holds that evangelical Christians must take hold of all aspects of society in order to pave the way for the Second Coming, in a message directly from God.
Doug Stringer, The Response's National Church and Ministry Mobilization Coordinator, who blamed American secularism and the increased acceptance of homosexuality for the 9/11 attacks, saying “It was our choice to ask God not to be in our every day lives and not to be present in our land.”
Cindy Jacobs, self-proclaimed “prophet” and endorser of The Response, who famously insisted that birds were dying in Arkansas earlier this year because of the repeal of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell.
C. Peter Wagner, an official endorser of The Response, is one of the most prominent leaders of the New Apostolic Reformation, a controversial movement whose followers believe they are prophets and apostles on par with Christ himself (other adherents include Engle, Jacobs and Anh). Wagner has advocated burning Catholic, Mormon and non-Christian religious objects. He blamed the Japanese stock market crash and later the devastating earthquake and tsunami in the country on a traditional ritual in which the emperor supposedly has “sexual intercourse” with the pagan Sun Goddess.
Che Ahn, a mentor of John Hagee and official endorser of The Response, who endorses “Seven Mountains” dominionism and compares the fight against gay rights to the fight against slavery.
John Benefiel, a self-proclaimed "apostle" and official endorser of The Response, who claims the Statue of Liberty is a "demonic idol" and that homosexuality is a plot cooked up by the Illuminati to control the world's population, and that he renamed the District of Columbia the “District of Christ” because he has “more authority than the U.S. Congress does.”
James “Jay” Swallow, official endorser of the rally, who calls himself a “spiritual warrior” and hosts “Strategic Warriors At Training (SWAT): A Christian Military Training Camp for the purpose of dealing with the occult and territorial enemy strong holds in America.”
Alice Smith, who advocates "spiritual housecleaning" because demons "sneak into" homes through everyday objects.
Willie Wooten, a self-proclaimed “apostle” who claims that God is punishing the African American community for supporting gay rights, reproductive freedom and the Democratic Party.
Pastor Stephen Broden – Broden, an endorser of The Response, has repeatedly insisted that a violent overthrow of the U.S. government must remain “on the table.”
Timothy F. Johnson – Johnson, a former vice-chairman of the North Carolina GOP, was elected to that post despite two domestic violence convictions and still unresolved questions about his military service and educational record.
Alice Patterson – Patterson, a member of The Response's leadership team, insists that the Democratic Party is controlled by a "demonic structure."
Submitted by Kyle Mantyla on Thursday, 8/4/2011 11:33 am
As we mentioned yesterday, Tim Pawlenty, Rick Santorum, and Michele Bachmann will be joining FRC, the National Organization for Marriage and the Susan B. Anthony List for a ""Values Voter Bus Tour" through Iowa.
One, support sending a federal constitutional amendment defining marriage as the union of one man and one woman to the states for ratification.
Two, nominate to the U.S. Supreme Court and federal bench judges who are committed to restraint and to applying the original meaning of the Constitution, appoint an attorney general similarly committed, and thus reject the idea our Founding Fathers inserted a right to gay marriage into our Constitution.
Three, defend the federal Defense of Marriage Act vigorously in court.
Four, establish a presidential commission on religious liberty to investigate and document reports of Americans who have been harassed or threatened for exercising key civil rights to organize, to speak, to donate or to vote for marriage and to propose new protections, if needed.
Five, advance legislation to return to the people ofthe District of Columbia their right to vote on marriage.
Submitted by Brian Tashman on Thursday, 7/28/2011 10:32 am
While WorldNetDaily frequently echoes the Tea Party’s right-wing reading of the Constitution and view of the Founding Fathers, WND’s Robert Ringer actually blames the Founders and the Constitution for the “breakdown” of democracy. Ringer says that the replacement of the Articles of Confederation with the Constitution was a disaster for democracy that has ultimately helped President Obama, who Ringer sees as the next Hitler, establish a “communist dictatorship” with his allied “fascistic socialists in Washington”:
Of all the dictators over the past hundred years, I believe Obama's rise to power mirrors that of Adolf Hitler's more than anyone else. I know, I know … I can practically hear readers chuckling. Enslaved people throughout history have a propensity for chuckling – until they wake up one morning and find themselves in chains. So, by all means, feel free to chuckle – but do hear me out.
…
Under the Articles of Confederation, the central government of America was very weak – which was a good thing. It was true then, and it's true now: You can have a strong government and a weak people, or a strong people and a weak government – but you cannot have both. Today, we have a draconian, out-of-control government and a very weak people. Arguably, democracy in this country started to break down in 1787 when the Constitution created a strong federal government. It got worse – much worse – under the fascist policies of Woodrow Wilson's reign from 1912 to 1920. Then, beginning in 1932, FDR's failed socialist policies took away even more individual freedom from American citizens. And the final disintegration of true democracy in the U.S. was catalyzed by the left-wing revolutionaries of the '60s.
So if you're wondering how Obama and his Marxist cronies have been able to violate the Constitution as though it didn't exist, the answer is that they are merely taking advantage of the decay of democracy in the U.S. that was already present when they came to power. While Americans have been busy focusing on sports, reality TV, eating out three nights a week and trying to pay their mortgages, the fascistic socialists in Washington have been quietly working to establish a dictatorship based on the ruins of our democracy (which actually began as a republic).
Get it? I hope so. Because if a vast majority of everyday folks don't get it soon, it will be too late. As I have repeatedly said, the debt-ceiling debate is nothing more than a distraction from the real, underlying problem we all face: We are losing our freedom.
Our focus should be on stopping Barack Obama and his Marxist allies in Washington from establishing a communist dictatorship – politely referred to by conservative media commentators as an "imperial presidency." But regardless of what one calls it, the important thing to understand is that under a dictatorship, everything else becomes irrelevant – including the debt-ceiling "crisis" that political junkies are spending so much time fretting about.
Submitted by Brian Tashman on Tuesday, 7/26/2011 5:22 pm
Earlier this summer presidential candidate Michele Bachmann raised eyebrows with her incoherent argument that she supports the Federal Marriage Amendment, which would ban same-sex marriage nationwide, while agreeing that states have a right to have their own laws on marriage under the 10th Amendment. Now, Texas governor and potential presidential candidate Rick Perry appears to be taking a similarly confusing and contradictory view on states’ rights.
Now, it appears that Perry is taking the Bachmann position by supporting both the sweeping and discriminatory Federal Marriage Amendment and states’ rights to have different marriage laws under the 10th Amendment. The Austin American Statesmenreports that Perry’s spokesman is now “confirming Perry's support of a federal constitutional amendment defining marriage as a union between a man and a woman”:
Kelly Shackelford, president and CEO of the conservative Liberty Institute, said he heard from concerned conservatives around the country who wanted to know what to make of Perry's remark.
"He probably could have used a much better term," Shackelford said. Shackelford, whose Plano-based group pushes for limited government and promotes Judeo-Christian values, said he has been telling callers that Perry has long favored an amendment to the U.S. Constitution that would define marriage as being only between a man and a woman.
…
Mark Miner, a spokesman for Perry, said the governor's social conservatism remains steadfast.
Miner said people who know Perry understand that two things he feels strongly about are states' rights and the institution of traditional marriage.
"Nothing has changed with the governor's philosophy here," he said. Besides confirming Perry's support of a federal constitutional amendment defining marriage as a union between a man and a woman, Miner pointed to the governor's state record. Perry supported the Texas Defense of Marriage Act and a state constitutional amendment defining traditional marriage, Miner noted.
Submitted by Kyle Mantyla on Wednesday, 7/20/2011 2:03 pm
As we have noted timeandagain, David Barton has this absurd tendency to simply assert that major parts of our system of government have been plucked directly out of the Bible while never bothering to provide any explanation or evidence whatsoever.
And he did it again while speaking at First Baptist Church of Woodstock, Georgia where is asserted that the free market system came directly out of five specific Bible passages:
Of course, if you bother to actually look up the verses Barton just rattles off, you might be left scratching your head trying to understand how the entire concept of free markets came from these short passages:
For even when we were with you, we gave you this rule: “The one who is unwilling to work shall not eat.”
As for Matthew 20 and 25 and Luke 19, they are parables in which Jesus is talking about Judgment Day and the Kingdom of Heaven.
In Matthew 25 and Luke 19, the parable is meant to illustrate that every person will be judged by God for how they have used the gifts He has given them while Matthew 20 reveals that all those who accept Christ will receive the same eternal reward.
In each case, it is clear that the parables Jesus tells are designed to teach about spiritual issues, but Barton blindly asserts that they are about economic issues and that our entire economic system is based upon them.
It is a good thing for Barton that the audiences to which he spreads his pseudo-historical nonsense never seem to take a few minutes to actually research any of his assertions. Because, if they did, his reputation as America's greatest historian might not survive.
Submitted by Kyle Mantyla on Tuesday, 7/19/2011 4:22 pm
Bryan Fischer has been demanding a ban on the construction of mosques in the United States for a year now and argues that such a prohibition is entirely constitutional because the First Amendment does not apply to Islam.
[T]he First Amendment was written neither to guarantee freedom of religion to Muslims or Buddhists or Hindus nor to prohibit their free exercise of religion. It wasn’t written about them one way or another.
It was written for one specific purpose: to protect the free exercise of the Christian religion ... We must be clear: the First Amendment does not prohibit the free exercise of alternative religions, but neither does it guarantee it. It simply does not address the issue at all.
In defense of this view, Fischer has lately started arguing that prohibitions on polygamy prove that "non-Christian religions" (i.e., Mormonism) do not have First Amendment protections:
That the free exercise clause provides no guarantee for non-Christian religions is made clear in the case of Mormonism. It was part and parcel of the “free exercise” of the Mormon faith to have as many wives as you wanted. Congress said nope. In fact, the Mormon church was required to prohibit plural marriages as a condition of Utah’s statehood.
(It’s worth noting in passing that the Mormon church has never renounced plural marriage. It has simply instructed its followers to obey federal law in the matter.)
Idaho came into the union in 1890, at virtually the same time as Utah, and the first page of Idaho’s state constitution makes it explicitly clear that the free exercise of religion shall in no sense be construed to justify plural marriages.
...
In fact, the Republican Party came into existence in 1854 to combat two evils: slavery and the pernicious Mormon practice of plural marriage, what the original GOP called "those twin relics of barbarism." (Let me point out that I’m talking about the LDS faith as it existed then, not as it exists today.)
Clearly, then, as our political experiment with the Mormon faith makes clear, there is no guarantee of the free exercise of religion for religions which are outside the stream of historic Christianity, as Mormonism is. (It denies the Trinity, the virgin birth of Christ, the unique deity of Christ, his all-sufficient atoning sacrifice on the cross, and the completeness of God’s revelation in the Old and New Testaments.)
Following Fischer's logic, it only stands to reason that local communities likewise have the power to deny Mormons permission to build temples in their communities as well.
Fischer claims that the Mormon church "never renounced plural marriage" and therefore it must be entirely acceptable for local officials who do not want Mormons or their "pernicious" teachings polluting their communities to deny them permission to build houses of worship, precisely because the First Amendment does not apply to "non-Christian religions" like Mormonism.
Submitted by Kyle Mantyla on Monday, 7/18/2011 3:46 pm
As we noted earlier today, Herman Cain had gone full-on Bryan Fischer in declaring that local officials ought to be able to ban the construction of mosques in their communities.
"I think the First Amendment is one of those amendments that is too important and protects rights that are too central to our guaranteed rights in this country to be left with a local option," he asserted.
Like Christians, Muslims have the right to have places of worship near where they live, Land said.
...
The Southern Baptist also asserted that Cain, who boasts that he is the descendant of slaves, should defend Muslims' rights under the Constitution so that they are upheld in every community, city and state.
"Mr. Cain of all people, as an African American, should understand that our civil rights have to be guaranteed on a federal level," he said. "I don't think he would want to leave the civil rights of an African American to the local voters in Philadelphia and Mississippi where they buried three civil rights workers – one black, two white – under a dam after they had killed them."
Land, as you may recall, has been a vocal opponent of the so-called "Ground Zero Mosque" and even resigned from the Anti-Defamation League's "Interfaith Coalition on Mosques" amid criticism that he was promoting Islam.
Submitted by Kyle Mantyla on Monday, 7/18/2011 10:03 am
There is a reason why Bryan Fischer really likes the candidacy of Herman Cain, and it is because Cain and Fischer hold many of the same bigoted views.
Over the weekend, Cain reinforced this fact when he told Chris Wallace of Fox News that communities ought to be able to ban the construction of mosques:
WALLACE: But couldn’t any community then say they don’t want a mosque in our community?
CAIN: They could say that. Chris, lets go back to the fundamental issue that the people are basically saying they’re objecting to. They’re objecting to the fact Islam is both a religion and a set of laws, Sharia law. That’s the difference between any one of our other traditional religions where it’s just about religious purposes. The people in the community know best, and I happen to side with the people in Murfreesboro.
WALLACE: You’re saying any community, if they want to ban a mosque?
CAIN: Yes. They have a right to do that. That’s not discriminating based upon religion.
Fischer, of course, loved it precisely because he has been calling on communities to ban the building of mosques for a year now.
So good for Herman Cain. He started off strong when it came to the Muslim deal - will not have a Muslim in my cabinet, he tried to finesse that, walk it back; shouldn't have done it, should have held firm.
I mean, there's no way a Muslim should be in anybody's cabinet in the United States of America because their ultimate devotion is not to the Constitution, it is to sharia law. That's what their God, their holy book and their prophet tell them is the highest law in the land. That's where their ultimate allegiance is going to be. It's impossible for them to take an oath to uphold and defend the Constitution of the United States and to be able to do that with any sort of a clear conscience.
It is of concern to anyone else that a Republican presidential candidate holds views that are exactly the same as those espoused by the Religous Right's most notorious bigot?
Andrew Duffelmeyer @ Iowa Independent: GOP hopefuls fight for social conservative support in Iowa.
Igor Volsky @ Think Progress LGBT: Herman Cain Flops Back To Supporting A Constitutional Amendment Against Same-Sex Marriage.
Alan Colmes: Herman Cain Shows No Understanding Of The Constitution In Pro-Life Amendment Statement.
Warren Throckmorton: NARTH is not primarily composed of mental health professionals.
Jillian Rayfield @ TPM: Twelve Pretty Racist Or Just Crazy Quotes From Pat Buchanan’s New Book.
Eric... MORE
SUBMITTED BY: Brian Tashman, Monday 10/24/2011, 4:55pm
Coverage of the Family Research Council’s Values Voter Summit this year was dominated by stories of Robert Jeffress’ criticism of the Mormon faith; Bryan Fischer’s unabashed bigotry; and the infighting that rose to the surface when Bill Bennett rebuked Jeffress and Mitt Romney, tepidly and not by name, denounced Fischer. The press coverage of the Religious Right conference was so completely focused on Jeffress and Fischer that the FRC even asked members to pray that the media will stop reporting on the story.
Today FRC president Tony Perkins used his radio alert today to... MORE
SUBMITTED BY: Brian Tashman, Friday 10/21/2011, 11:16am
During an interview with Piers Morgan on Wednesday, Herman Cain ignited controversy by stating that homosexuality is a choice and presenting an incoherent view on abortion: that he is against abortion rights but that “it’s not the government’s role or anybody else’s role to make that decision.” In the same interview, Cain also repeated his claim that he never said he’d ban Muslims in his administration if elected president:
Morgan: You got into hot water about the whole issue of Muslims in a potential cabinet.
Cain: Yes.
Morgan: And you have kind of flip-... MORE
Someone, presumably Billy Kirkland, the National Field Director of Ralph Reed's Faith and Freedom Coalition, uploaded a video to YouTube of a presentation that Ralph Reed recorded for some sort of Tea Party class on the Constitution, at least judging by the context of Reed's remarks.
What the video was recorded for exactly is hard to say because there is very little information provided by the person who uploaded it, but in it Reed asserts that when the government creates programs to help the poor or senior citizens, it takes away our liberty:
The sad thing is that we as a nation... MORE
SUBMITTED BY: Brian Tashman, Tuesday 10/18/2011, 3:50pm
Tea Party Nation sent to their members today a message from activist Melissa Brookstone urging businesspeople to “not hire a single person” to protest the Obama administration’s supposed “war against business and my country.” Brookstone writes that business owners should stop hiring new employees in order to stand up to “this new dictator,” the “global Progressive socialist movement,” Hollywood, the media and Occupy Wall Street.
Brookstone writes:
Resolved that: The Obama administration and the Democrat-controlled Senate, in alliance with... MORE
SUBMITTED BY: Peter Montgomery, Thursday 10/13/2011, 10:53am
One of the sessions at the recent Values Voter Summit featured a showing of a new half-hour video produced by the American Family Association called “Divorcing God: Secularism and the Republic.” (Back in the summer it was being promoted as "Divorcing God: Secularism, Sexual Anarchy, and the Future of the Republic.") The video features an array of Religious Right leaders and academics, whose argument can be summarized this way: America, whose greatness is decaying because the country has turned its back on the God who inspired the founding fathers, is doomed if it... MORE
SUBMITTED BY: Brian Tashman, Wednesday 10/12/2011, 1:40pm
This morning on the Today Show Mitt Romney and Chris Christie repeated their call for Rick Perry to disassociate himself from pastor Robert Jeffress because of the pastor’s denigration of Romney’s Mormon faith. Yesterday, Christie even compared Jeffress to “those folks in New Jersey who disparaged in both parties my decision to appoint a Muslim judge” and said that any “campaign that associates itself with that type of comment is beneath the office of President of the United States, in my view.”
Ironically, one of the people who slammed Christie over his... MORE
