As part of our on-going crusade to debunk the right-wing lie started a few days ago by the ACLJ about a supposedly “anti-Christian” provision in the stimulus bill, we’ve been keeping track of where this talking point has been popping up and continuously pointing out that it is entirely bogus.
But that hasn’t stopped the Right from spreading it and now the amendment that Sen. Jim DeMint offered to strip this “controversial” provision from the legislation is reportedly scheduled for a vote in the Senate today.
Interestingly, earlier today the Christian Anti-Defamation Commission also jumped on board this “Christian victimization” bandwagon and added their voice to those who were demanding that the provision be removed from the legislation … but now the piece has disappeared from its website. Perhaps Gary Cass and company realized that they were dead wrong about this and removed it to save themselves the embarrassment. (Update: It looks like the CADC is back on board, as this article has been re-posted on its website.)
Unfortunately, the same cannot be said for The Brody File. CBN’s David Brody was the first to report that Sen. DeMint was opposing this provision, saying it was “an attack on people of faith and I don’t think Americans will stand for it.”
Following Brody’s post yesterday, I wrote this post where I again pointed out that this was in no way true and sent it, along with our initial post debunking this falsehood, to Brody directly, pointing out that the ACLJ’s claims, as well as those made by Sen. DeMint, were blatantly misleading and outright false. Being that Brody considers himself a journalist and regularly gets asked to appear on CNN both as a host and a commentator, I figured he’d want to correct the record so as not to misinform his audience.
But apparently that was not the case, as Brody hasn’t seen fit to bother correcting this misinformation. In fact, not only has it not been corrected, but now we find his producer, Laura Kraus, writing posts on his blog where she perpetuates the same false statements:
Basically, this broad language could mean that any school or university building that might host an occasional prayer breakfast or religious student association would not be able to receive this federal aid, even if the primary purpose of the meeting room is a classroom or gym. Since the Supreme Court has previously ruled in 2001 that it’s unconstitutional to restrict religious speech and expression in public facilities like schools.
No it wouldn’t … and if you bothered to do any research at all, you would know that.
And then, for good measure, Robertson offers up this trenchant bit of analysis:
The amendment is expected to pass when voted on today, but we’ll see. If DeMint’s amendment is not added to the current stimulus package, the division caused by section 803 could cause a huge headache for the Obama Administration.
If this amendment passes, it’ll be an absolute disgrace … but if it doesn’t, the primary “headache” the Obama Administration will have in dealing with this will come from being forced to continually shoot down the incessant lies that Religious Right groups and their allies in the media keep spreading about it.
