Threats

The other day, we posted on a Washington Post article highlighting a recent fund-raising letter from Operation Rescue warning that it was on the verge of shutting its doors if it didn't get donations and financial help soon.

Now, OR's Troy Newman is complaining that the letter "is being misreported by the media":

Media obtained a copy of the letter and then started placing stories indicating Operation Rescue "is very close to shutting down unless emergency help arrives soon" (Associated Press). That report quotes Operation Rescue's Troy Newman as saying: "We're so broke (as the saying goes), we can't even pay attention."

But Newman tells OneNewsNow that report is an exaggeration. "Rumors of Operation Rescue's demise are grossly overrated -- and it's something that the liberal left-wing media loves to salivate over," he states.

One report theorized the pro-life group suffered financially because of its long campaign against late-term abortionist George Tiller, who was murdered in May. AP refers to the murder as "a public relations nightmare" for the group. But Newman says that is not true.

"The real impact upon us and all non-profits is that the economic crisis, the recession that we're in that began late last year, has impacted everybody, across the board, 30-40% down in their giving -- and Operation Rescue is no different," he adds.

Newman says there have been good and bad times during his 20 years of ministry, but they rely first on the Lord and secondly on donors. The end result, he shares, is that no bills have gone unpaid.

Really?  Because if you read the letter Newman sent out it seems as if the media reports were entirely accurate.  After all, how else are you supposed to interpret Newman's assertions that the organization was "now so broke (as the saying goes), we can't even pay attention," admissions that "we struggle to pay every bill [and] had to borrow money just to send you this letter," and warnings that "we're completely out of money" and that "we're getting very close to the point of shutting everything down if emergency help doesn't arrive soon"?:

Dear Friend of Operation Rescue,

I need you to please stop whatever you're doing right now and read this letter. It's that urgent.

At this moment, I'm writing this from a closed abortion mill.

It's the one in Wichita, Kansas, where more than 50,000 innocent babies were brutally murdered from 1983 to 2006, until we at Operation Rescue bought the building and kicked the baby-killers out!

The abortion staff who worked here never re-opened. They are permanently out of business. And babies are thereby saved.

We "exorcised" this building and turned it into our national headquarters. So now, babies are being saved in this building! And I firmly believe that the souls of the 50,000 babies killed here are cheering me on.

I sure hope so. Because right now, I need cheering on.

You see, this summer has been brutal for Operation Rescue. Not only did George Tiller's death throw everybody in the pro-life movement for a loop (and especially us), but the economic crisis our nation is suffering from has brought our financial support to nearly a halt.

We're now so broke (as the saying goes), we can't even pay attention.

Seriously. We struggle to pay every bill. I had to borrow money just to send you this letter, in hopes that you will come to our rescue so that we can continue to rescue babies.

And, what's really frustrating is that this crisis couldn't have come at a worse time.

Why?

Because, in the next 30 days, we're planning to launch the most ambitious and most significant project in our entire history.

It's something that's going to devastate the abortion cartel. It could even help end abortion in America once and for all.

Basically, it centers around our unique ability to close abortion mills.

And although I can't go into detail about it -- because we need to take the abortion cartel by surprise -- I can tell you that it will be a totally NEW phase in the pro-life fight.

We've been working on it all summer. And we were planning to launch it in the next 30 days.

However, now that we're completely out of money, I'm afraid we won't even be able to launch it... ever!

And that would be the worst defeat imaginable.

The only thing that can save this project is EMERGENCY FUNDING -- and EMERGENCY PRAYERS -- so that we can move forward as planned.

Because when abortion mills get closed, babies are saved.

It's just that simple.

For instance, here at the closed abortion mill that's now my office, we recently had a young woman knock on our door.

She came for an abortion, because she thought this was still an abortion mill. The same one where she had an abortion as a teenager years ago.

What she got instead was about an hour of much-needed counseling from our staff, plus an armload of educational materials.

And, praise God, she's decided to keep her baby!

With our new project, we can continue to close abortion mills around the country -- faster and easier than ever before.

Why, just last year, we were instrumental in closing at least 10 mills!

And as you'll see on the enclosed yellow sheet of paper, we've closed more than 40 abortion mills over the years!!

Right now, there are only about 729 mills left in the United States -- down significantly from the 2,126 mills that were killing babies back in 1991...!!

Our new project can get rid of those 729 mills -- one at a time -- peacefully and legally.

No violence. No threats. Just super-effective activism that we've learned and perfected over the last 20 years.

I'll tell you all about this new project in my next letter to you. Revealing the details now would be counter-productive.

However, I can't even move forward on it unless we get out of this financial crisis immediately.

That's why I urge you to take a look at the enclosed yellow sheet with the list of closed abortion mills. You'll be pleasantly shocked.

And then I beseech you to rush a life-saving gift -- of any amount -- so that we can get back on our feet and move forward with this exciting new project.

Without your help -- and your prayers and God's grace -- this project will go nowhere.

And that means all those abortion mills will stay OPEN and continue killing the innocent little babies like the ones that were killed in this building I'm sitting in.

50,000 of them--in one abortion mill alone.

We know how to close abortion mills. And this new project is how we'll get the job done.

But we can't even get it started without your utmost help at this time.

Frankly, we're getting very close to the point of shutting everything down if emergency help doesn't arrive soon.

That would be a devastating blow -- especially at this time when we're actually WINNING the pro-life fight.

More people (a majority of Americans, in fact) identify themselves as opposed to abortion, especially younger Americans. The number of abortion mills has been cut by two-thirds since 1991. The total number of abortions is down by 400,000 per year! The abortion cartel can't find new abortionists, and the average age of the existing abortionists is 72. All this adds up to VICTORY for the babies and for our country -- but ONLY if we can keep moving forward.

And that, unfortunately, takes money.

So please prayerfully consider what size gift you can afford to send to us right away.

There's no time to lose.

I thank you for being there for us in the past.

And I thank you in advance for helping us now.

God bless you.

For the Babies,

Troy Newman

President, Operation RescueP.S. I can't emphasize this enough...

This is the worst financial crisis we have ever faced. And it's hit us at the worst time possible.

Without emergency help from our loyal supporters like you, I hate to think what kind of situation we'll be forced into.

But let me tell you: Our enemies in the abortion cartel would rejoice. And the angels would weep.

Please don't let that happen. Please send your emergency gift TODAY.

Thank you from the bottom of my heart.

Back on September 3, the judge overseeing the case involving Rifqa Bary sealed the findings from the Florida Department of Law Enforcement's investigation into the wild allegations made by right-wing activists who have been claiming that she'd be she'd be murdered if she were sent back to her parents in Ohio, alleging that the mosque her parents attend is a terrorist hotbed, and even throwing around allegations of sexual and physical abuse.

The report was to be sealed for ten days to give all parties a chance to read it over. Well, the ten days are up and early reports on its contents say the report has not substantiated any of the right-wing claims:

The FDLE report on the case of a teenage girl who ran away from home fearing an honor killing for converting to Christianity shows local church officials likely had a role in getting her to Orlando.

The report, which was under a 10-day seal that expired Monday, alleges 17-year-old Rifqa Bary misled investigators about most of the details about how she arrived in Florida.

Bary initially claimed she hitchhiked her way to the Greyhound bus station in Columbus, Ohio and used money she had saved up from her job to buy the ticket to Orlando. Instead, investigators say she was driven to the bus station by a young pastor named Brian Williams. He baptized Bary in Columbus but has since moved to Kansas City. And the ticket, they say, was purchased under a fake name by someone in Orlando.

Once here, authorities say she was met by the Law family, apparently leading members of the Global Revolution Church, and taken to the home of the church's Pastor Blake Lorenz. She stayed there for 2-and-a-half weeks before her first hearing in juvenile court that placed her in foster care. The report does not say that the Lorenz family, or the church as a whole, had an explicit role in getting Bary to Orlando.

The Global Revolution Church is now "restructuring," according to reports.

The report also found no evidence to back up claims of abuse or serious threats to Bary.

Bary told investigators her father had punched her while they rode in a car because she had shown embarrassment about wearing an Islamic headscarf. Her father denied that allegation. However, FDLE says it did not investigate that specific incident, or other claims of physical or sexual abuse, because they would have occurred outside Florida's jurisdiction. Ohio authorities told them they had no reports of the abuse.

The teen also told authorities her teacher had offered to let Bary stay at her house if she needed to get away from repercussions from her family because of her Christian faith. But when the FDLE interviewed that teacher, she told them she offered up her house because Bary's brother was having parties with alcohol at the Bary home when their parents were out of town, and she had never been told about threats of danger to Bary because of her Christian faith.

Of course, the findings in this report probably won't dissuade right-wing activists like Pamella Geller of Atlas Shrugs from their crusade to save Bary from the horrors of Islam or stop her from penning diatribes like this piece entitled "Is Newsweek Trying to Kill Rifqa Bary?" any time anyone writes an article that doesn't re-confirm her biases.

In her piece, Geller attacks this recent Newsweek article as being riddled with errors and misrepresentations, such as this: 

Finally, [author Arian] Campo-Flores asked of Rifqa's family: "if they were indeed such fanatics, why would they have let their daughter prance around as a cheerleader?" But according to [Rifqa's friend Jamal] Jivanjee, Rifqa's parents never saw her in her cheerleader's uniform. The cheerleaders had a warm-up suit; when Rifqa dressed to go to games, she had the warm-up suit on, never the cheerleading skirt. But Campo-Flores never bothered to discover that.

Really?  Because if you scroll ahead about 2 minutes into this recent video from ABC News, you can see Bary's father showing ABC's Dan Harris photos of Rifqa in her cheerleading outfit:

And if there are any doubts that the right-wing activists who have rallied around Riifqa are doing so as part of their perceived battle between Christianity and Islam, this ought to dispel it:

At the Orlando prayer meeting on Sept. 2, believers talked about how God is using Rifqa as a catalyst to bring more people to Christ.

They asked God to heal her right eye, blinded in a childhood accident, as a divine sign. "It would show the world there is one true living God,"[Blake] Lorenz said. "We do believe, oh God, Jesus is preparing the world for his return."

As should this article from Charisma:

U.S., author Joel C. Rosenberg and Oklahoma pastor Reza Safa hope to educate Christians about the ongoing danger of Muslim extremism through events being broadcast tonight online.

"The leaders of racial Islam no longer simply want to terrorize us, they want to annihilate us, and they're trying to obtain the weapons to do it," said Rosenberg, author of the New York Times best-seller Inside the Islamic Revolution, which was adapted into a documentary that released today.

Rosenberg will lead a webcast town hall tonight at 7 p.m. Eastern that is to be broadcast into more than 600 churches from Calvary Chapel Philadelphia. Speakers include retired Lt. Gen. Jerry Boykin, former deputy undersecretary of defense for intelligence, and Christian revivalist Hormoz Shariat, a former radical Shia Muslim.

Meanwhile, Safa is hosting a free conference at River of Life Assembly of God in Estero, Fla., that is aimed at reversing the ideology that birthed 9/11, which Safa says is still alive and well. The Reversing Jihad Conference begins tonight at 6:30 p.m. Eastern and will be broadcast live online at Lifestream.tv.

The event, which runs through Saturday afternoon, features such speakers as evangelist Sam Shamoun; Tom Trento, president of the Florida Security Council, a terrorist watchdog group; and pastor Jeremiah Cummings, a former member of the Nation of Islam.

Trento's Florida Security Council just so happens to be the group behind the website "The Rifqa Bary Story"

In fact, this spiritual battle against Islam seems to be a driving force behind a lot of right-wing activism, like the "Cry Out America" 9/11 prayer rally we mentioned last week:

[Billy Wilson] said 9/11 also illuminated the spiritual battle the nation is in to maintain its Judeo-Christian identity.

"There is an encroachment of Islamic thought in America, and the Islamic agenda is growing in the United States," Wilson said. "We see that the real spiritual battle in America is going to be around this particular front, the pluralism of the nation. Cry Out America is really about lifting the name of Jesus in the public square again and that wherever else we look, the real answer for us is in God and in Christ in the nation."

Last month we noted that Mike Huckabee was scheduled to be one of the speakers at the "Protecting America Against Permanent Continental Shutdown From Electromagnetic Pulse" conference.

The conference was held earlier this week and Huckabee used his address to declare an EPM attack one of the greatest threats we face as a nation and lash out at the "cynics" who make "snarky" comments about the threat:

“This is a clear and present danger to our way of life in our country,” Huckabee said. “We are so dependent on electricity, its loss is a catastrophe, not an inconvenience.”

Huckabee was the keynote speaker on the second day of an EMPACT America conference exploring the threat of an EMP incident and what can be done to protect against it.

...

Huckabee said while some people would sneer at and make “snarky comments” about those predictions, it did not make them less likely.

“We should not minimize the threat of EMP,” he said. “There’s always going to be cynics. There were cynics who didn’t believe the Japanese were a threat (to attack Pearl Harbor) and there were cynics who didn’t believe radical Islam was a threat" ... Recalling the unpredicted terrorist attacks of 9/11, Huckabee said, “The greatest threat we face today is the naiveté about the threat of our enemies. Any country who has the capacity to explode a nuclear device is a threat.”

On a related note, TNR's Michael Crowley wrote an article on this whole EMP issue earlier this summer called "The Newt Bomb: How a pulp-fiction fantasy became a GOP weapons craze."

The saga of Rafiq Bary continues to drag on.

The short version is that Bary is a 17 year old girl from a Muslim family in Ohio who converted to Christianity, reportedly 4 years ago. Several months ago, her father bought her a laptop and she started spending all of her time on Facebook and sometime during that period became convinced that her father was going to kill her in an "honor killing."  Someone eventually bought her a bus ticket and she fled from her home in Ohio to Florida where she lived for nearly two weeks Blake and Beverly Lorenz of Global Revolution Church, whom she had gotten to know through a Facebook prayer group. Her parents say she's been brainwashed, her defenders say they are just trying to save her life.

Bary's case has, in recent weeks, become a huge deal for the Religious Right and has been getting lots of coverage from places like Fox News, WorldNetDaily, OneNewsNow, and Human Events and has also been championed by several Religious Right groups like Concerned Women for America, the Traditional Values Coalition and the Christian Anti-Defamation Commission.

It's likewise been a huge deal on right-wing blogs, and some bloggers even showed up outside of the hearing last week:

Before the hearing on Thursday, outside in front of the courthouse, Tom Trento held a news conference, as he did before the first hearing. He's from the Florida Security Council, an organization with the slogan of "Securing Florida Against Terror." This time, though, he brought a pastor from Ohio and a pair of anti-Islam bloggers.

Jamal Jivanjee, the Ohio pastor, compared Rifqa Bary to Anne Frank, the Jewish girl who was killed by Nazis in World War II and whose diary became what many consider one of the most important books of the 20th century.

Robert Spencer, who writes on a blog called Jihad Watch, told reporters Islam was here to take over America. Pam Geller of the Atlas Shrugs blog dismissed the results of the Franklin County investigation by saying things were "corrupt in Ohio."

"Forget your political correctness!" she said.

But the driving force behind this entire spectacle seems to be John Stemberger, who stepped in to represent Bary and just so happens to be the president and general counsel of the Florida Family Policy Council, which is a state affiliate of Focus on the Family.  He was also deeply involved in passing Florida's anti-gay marriage amendment last November. 

Once he got involved, he started leveling all sorts of wild accusations, claiming that if Bary were sent back to her parents she'd be murdered and alleging that the mosque her parents attend is a terrorist hotbed and throwing around allegations of sexual and physical abuse. He even publicly revealed Bary's parent's address in Ohio.

The authorities in Ohio conducted an investigation and found there was no reason to suspect that such allegations were true and the Florida Department of Law Enforcement conducted its own investigation and delivered it to court last week ahead of a scheduled hearing on Bary's situation. But suddenly Stemberger asked the judge to seal the report so that nobody in the press or the public could see it.  Though those involved has been barred from discussing the report's findings, Bary's parent's attorney stated that it came back "very favorable" and contained "no evidence whatsoever" of alleged abuse or threats of death made by the girl's parents. The judge ordered the FDLE's investigation into allegations against her parents was sealed for ten days and ordered Bary and her parents to seek the mediation within 30 days, scheduling another hearing for September 29 if the family is not able to resolve the conflict.

Whatever happens regarding Bary's status, it seems clear that those claiming to represent her interests will continue to utilize a strategy that hinges largely on transforming the story of a runaway girl into a full-blown war between Christianity and Islam:

Robert Spencer is the director of Jihad Watch. He was in Orlando to take part in a news conference supporting the girl's contention that she would be at grave risk if returned to her family.

"Her testimony is entirely credible. There is indeed a death penalty in Islam for those who leave Islam. Her father attended a mosque that is very devout. It's not the least unbelievable that with the death penalty for apostasy existing, this would put this girl at risk," he notes.

According to Spencer, those advocating for the family attempted to disrupt their news conference. "There was a very rude individual who was connected with the family in Ohio who disrupted our press conference and tried to spread lies about Islamic apostasy law," he adds.

While others will continue to use it an opportunity to win more converts to Christ:

Attorneys for Bary's parents have accused Stemberger in particular of using the case to attack Islam. On Monday, Stemberger filed documents alleging the Ohio mosque the Bary family attends has ties to terrorist groups, claims the mosque's leader denies.

Christian observers say Bary's case, and the media attention it has received, may be part of God's plan for the teen. If her parents had learned of her faith just a year from now, there likely would have been little uproar.

"It is possible that God wanted to do something through this for the Muslim children," said evangelist Steven Masood, a native of Pakistan whose father tried to kill him after learning of his conversion in 1973. He ultimately fled the predominantly Muslim nation in 1981 after being imprisoned for violating its anti-blasphemy laws, which are punishable by death.

"There are teenagers who are looking seriously at what has happened," Masood added. "[They say], ‘If she is doing this, why can't we?' It will bring a lot of honest teenagers out of Islam."

[Jamal] Jivanjee agrees. "I think God wants to elevate her story," he said. "He wants to use it as a wake-up call to other Christians ... and a story of hope for other Muslims. What gave her courage to stand up to her parents has been Jesus. She'd been quiet about her abuse in the past, but she's not quiet about Jesus. It needs to be talked about."

In fact, it seems as if actively seeking the conversion of Muslims is part of a growing right-wing effort:

The Christian missionaries came to Dearborn [Michigan] this summer from across the United States to win over souls for Jesus.

The evangelists handed out literature, held religious debates and met with residents in a city they sought out because of its large numbers of Muslims. It's part of an increasing effort by some Christians, mostly evangelicals, to convert the Muslims of metro Detroit -- in schools, at festivals and on street corners.

To Eric Haven, executive pastor at Woodside Bible Church in Troy, the growth of Islam in the United States gives churches a chance to convert closer to home.

"For years, Christians have sent missionaries around the world to proclaim the gospel of Christ," Haven said. "In this day and age, the world is coming to America. ... So, it's a great opportunity."

The efforts have stepped up in recent years as more Christians have become aware of the Islamic presence in Dearborn, where about one-third of the city's 98,000 residents are of Arab descent, many of them Muslim and some Christian ...

There is money behind the push. One group spent at least $67,000 on materials, airfare and lodging for Christian activists to visit Dearborn this summer.

...

Some residents said the efforts in recent months have crossed over into harassment and bigotry.

During the annual Arab International Festival in Dearborn in June, for instance, some Christian evangelists were accused of openly insulting Islam's prophet. And others yelled at passersby "that they were going to hell because they were Muslim," according to a Dearborn police report.

Last week we posted on the toolkit that the Family Research Council was distributing to its members urging them to organize town hall events in opposition to healthcare reform in their local churches.

Well, it looks like this effort has gotten off to a fast start, thanks to Sen. David Vitter, who recently participated in one of these events which was organized by and featured FRC President Tony Perkins:

On his Facebook page, David Vitter just thanked Family Research Council President and former Louisiana legislator Tony Perkins for hosting a Vitter event in a church last night.

"Last night I participated in a community wide town hall in Greenwell Springs to discuss health care reform. Was a great meeting. Special thanks to Tony Perkins and a group of local churches who partnered together to host a panel discussion on health… care, allowing over 800 in attendance to participate in this important topic."

Several videos from the event have now appeared on YouTube and they show the event to be every bit as enlightening as we would expect.

Right off the bat, after Sen. Vitter thanks "Tony," he says that he is particularly delighted to finally participate in a church-based discussion about healthcare and hopes to have several more such faith-based discussions around the state.

Then came questions from the audience about the entire effort just being a power-grab by Obama, as well as questions about abortion and conscience protections.  At no point did Vitter try to correct the audience's misunderstandings and, instead, worked to reinforce them.

Then came this fascinating statement from an audience member in which he claimed that Vladimir Putin had recently written a column for Pravda urging President Obama not to try Marxism because it doesn't work before declaring that he was one of those uninsured that politicians keep talking about, but that he was uninsured by choice.  It seems that the audience member doesn't trust medicine and doesn't see a need for it and that what is really needed is to "get Americans weaned off of the medical care system all together" ... at which point the audience bursts into applause before the speaker goes on the cite a doctor in New Orleans who has been able to cure every cancer patient he has seen in the last twenty years in just three weeks by simply using Vitamin C:

This final video starts out with an attack on Van Jones, which is reinforced by Sen. Vitter who says that all of Obama's czars are unconstitutional. The next question is about the past writings of Obama's science adviser John Holdren, which has been a topic of right-wing outrage for several weeks now. Around the 4:00 mark of this video, Perkins' voice pops up in response to the Holdren question where he decries the "influence of authors who put these crazy ideas out there and are embraced by liberal politicians" and saying that he has "no dobut" that healthcare reform would lead to forced sterilization:

Last night, in conjunction with its healthcare webcast, the Family Research Council  announced the release of this new ad in which a couple complains that the man cannot get the life-saving surgery he needs while taxpayer dollars are being used for abortion:

Tonight, during a live webcast joined by more than 49,000 viewers, Family Research Council Action President Tony Perkins unveiled a new TV ad which will initially run in five key states including Pennsylvania, Arkansas, Alaska, Louisiana, and Nebraska. The hard hitting ad lays out two key threats should President Obama's plan become reality - rationing and taxpayer funded abortions. Patients, particularly the elderly, will face denial of vital treatments while at the same time be forced to pay for abortions.

The ad urges viewers to tell Congress to oppose the government takeover of health care. The ad also urges opposition to a health care plan that will deny care to 'our greatest generation' and deny life to 'our future generation.'

FRC Action President Tony Perkins had this to say:

"In a world of health care rationing, the elderly, the handicapped and the frail are the most likely to lose their lives because care was delayed or denied. Under the government-run plans in England and Canada, the countries' sick and elderly aren't getting the care they need. As a result, their system isn't improving lives but prematurely taking them. Here in the United States, President Obama's rationing would mean that you and I could be denied basic care while our tax dollars are used to underwrite a mother choosing to end the life of her unborn child.

"On the other key life-and-death decisions there is an active commitment on the part of Senate Democratic Leadership to allow the rationing of health care. This is what the White House and Congress mean when they say they will cut costs. It means cutting off your access to health care services by creating the legal authority to do so, while stopping any provision becoming law that would prevent rationing.

"FRC Action will continue to work to mobilize a coalition in opposition to the health care plan in its current form which will force taxpayers to fund abortions, violate the conscience rights of medical workers, and impose a massive tax and debt burden on American families."

Earlier in the day, Tony Perkins joined Reps. Joe Pitts, Mike Pence, Chris Smith, Jeff Fortenberry, Trent Franks, Doug Lamborn, as well as Harry Jackson, Wendy Wright, and Doug Johnson of the National Right to Life Committee for a press conference "to discuss how President Obama's health care takeover plan contains hidden abortion mandates."

We were on hand as well and have put together this highlights reel featuring Franks calling abortion the greatest genocide in human history and asserting that this nation's abortion policies came out of slavery, a point that was echoed by Harry Jackson, while Tony Perkins decried healthcare reform as a "bailout" of Planned Parenthood and Wendy Wright asserted that women would be forced by government bureaucrats into having abortions:

Mat Staver can be a prison inmate's fiercest advocate for religious liberties, so long as the inmate chooses Staver's religion. If not, your religious freedoms are more likely to be called "security threats" by the Liberty Counsel's founder.

In a suit recently filed by the Indiana chapter of the ACLU, Muslim inmates have asked that they be able to practice their faith dutifully, which in turn, means small group prayer five times a day.

Louay Safi, director of leadership development with the Plainfield-based Islamic Society of North American, said Muslims try to pray in groups whenever possible.

"Muhammad said there is a much greater reward for people who pray in congregation than those who pray individually," he said.

As of now, the prison only allows the Muslim inmates to worship as a group one hour per week, though inmates are allowed to congregate for card games or to watch television multiple times a day.

To Staver, however, there is no reason the inmates should be allowed to worship in small groups, especially since a group of Muslim inmates congregating is an obvious security threat:

The lawsuit, however, in this particular case says that they are allowed to pray as a group only just one hour a week. The fact is that there is no constitutional right to assembly as a group five times a day.

But I think in the situation with regards to the Muslims, there is clearly a security issue at risk here.

While there may not be an explicit constitutional right to prayer five times a day, there isn't an explicit constitutional right to monthly baptisms at a prison either; that is because they both fall under laws protecting an inmate's right to worship. Staver must be getting forgetful, because not too long ago his Liberty Counsel threatened a New Mexico jail with a lawsuit unless monthly baptisms were allowed for inmates wishing to convert to Christianity.

Liberty Counsel sent a demand letter to the warden and the county explaining that failure to allow the baptisms violated the inmates' constitutional right to free exercise of religion.

Mathew D. Staver, Founder of Liberty Counsel and Dean of Liberty University School of Law, commented, "With the high rate of recidivism, prisons are in desperate need of better ways to rehabilitate inmates and make them productive citizens. Christian conversion and faith play a key role in transforming broken lives into new beginnings. Rather than throwing up roadblocks to Christian faith and worship, prisons should welcome the positive changes that the Christian conversion brings and the role that baptism plays in the inmates making a public confession of burying the old life and being resurrected to a new life in Jesus Christ."

So, in other words, Staver believes firmly in an inmate's right to religious freedom; the religion just has to be Christianity.

• Judicial Watch has released a "Special Report on Judge Sotomayor's Connection to the Puerto Rican Legal Defense and Education Fund."
• Rick Warren will reportedly be attending Islamic Society of North America's annual convention in Washington, D.C. over the Fourth of July weekend.
• Carrie Prejean is seeking a book deal.
• Gary Bauer says that Sarah Palin's feud with David Letterman "proves conservatives can fight pop culture and win."
• Operation Rescue and other Wichita-based anti-abortion groups say they have received death threats in response to last month's killing of George Tiller.
• The Family Research Council defends Bill O'Reilly's attacks on Tiller, saying "Something has been lost in the canonization of George Tiller--and that 'something' is the truth ... If Bill O'Reilly was fanning anything, it was the facts. We applaud him for drawing attention to a grisly procedure that even the most hardened pro-choice Democrats in Congress oppose.
• Finally, the Christian Anti-Defamation Commission explains that Tiller's murder was wrong because, even though "Tiller certainly was guilty of murder before God ... lawfully established civil authorities are the rightful ministers of God’s wrath. They have been granted a monopoly by God on the use of the sword, namely capital punishment and physical coercion. "

For years, whenever the Religious Right felt it was being under appreciated by the Republican Party, leaders would start hinting, and even sometimes openly threatening, that the socially conservative grassroots voters would utterly abandon the GOP for a third party during the next election cycle. 

Of course, that never happened and every time an election came around, the Right did what it could to mobilize in support of the Republican Party, despite all its earlier threats and whining. 

The one exception that I am aware of what back in 1996 when James Dobson cast a "protest vote" against the Bob Dole, the GOP's nominee, by voting for  Howard Phillips, the nominee of the U.S. Taxpayer’s Party (now known as the Constitution Party).

Since the Religious Right is always threatening to leave the GOP for a third party , it only makes sense that the Constitution Party would try to capitalize on the current discontent and start trying to woo disaffected "values voters" into its camp:

The fastest-growing third party in America, the Constitution Party, will discuss a nationwide effort to encourage Christians to vote "like their faith depended on it." The CP will host a number of notable values-oriented speakers at its Spring National Committee meeting June 12th and 13th at the Renaissance Newark Airport Hotel . The party will gather to discuss its unprecedented growth which coincides with widespread voter dissatisfaction with the Republican and Democratic parties. The Constitution Party, the only political party in America which is 100% pro-life is challenging all Believers to put an end to the "lesser of two evils" approach to voting.

"Christians must vote their values and leave the results to God," noted Constitution Party National Committee Chairman Jim Clymer adding, "Our country was founded on Biblical principles, that's why it was so blessed. Without returning to God's law, we cannot expect America to change for the better."

Outside of former Congressman/crackpot Virgil Goode, and professional conspiracy theorist Jerome Corsi, the event doesn't have any big name draws to speak of. 

Nonetheless, it'll be interesting to see if the Constitution Party's efforts to win over Christian voters will pay off, especially in light of the on-going tension between the GOP and its right-wing base.