The Bacon Brothers Band (Kevin and Michael Bacon).
Messages and performances by:
Jack Klugman,Wendie Malick
, James Whitmore, Catherine Dent,
Dan Lauria,Marc Maron Catie Curtis, with a personal message from MichaelJ. Fox .
Click here to find a theater near you.
The massive and repeated rate reductions Bernanke has chosen -- we expect another one tomorrow -- directly challenge the status of the American currency.
As his predecessor did at every slowdown of activity, the new Fed chairman tries to relaunch the credit machine, hence monetary creation, to prop up the economy and prices and to break the deflationary spiral.
Without much success. The gears in the transmission have jammed and the confidence of already-overextended households and companies is faltering.
But as he acts this way, he reinforces the already well-anchored sentiment that the dollar - weighted down by the United States' $9,000 billion debt that cannot be reimbursed - is overvalued, which amplifies the American currency's slide.
The inflows of foreign capital that have allowed deficits to grow and the currency to maintain its value for twenty years (the Clinton episode aside) are in the process of drying up. During the last three months of 2007, the influx of foreign investments went from $113 billion to $56 billion.
Just recently, US Treasury bonds have been evaluated as less reliable than Germany's.
This drop in the dollar Bernanke has accepted and precipitated to save Wall Street looks like a runaway train that will export the American crisis to the rest of the world, and do so at an exorbitant cost.
Since most raw materials markets, including most obviously oil, are denominated in dollars, the slide in the US currency mechanically entails a revaluation of raw materials' prices and provokes significant global inflation.
This phenomenon is further reinforced by the flight of capital abandoning dollar-denominated securities, the value of which is melting like snow in the sun, and seeking refuge in raw materials markets.
The libraries provide technical information and documentation for enforcement cases and help EPA staff members track new environmental technologies and the health risks associated with dangerous chemicals.Yesterday, Associated Press reported that key advisors for the EPA worked for companies with chemicals under EPA scrutiny. Here's a quote:
They also are repositories of scientific information that is used to back up the agency's positions on new regulations and environmental reports and data that are tapped by people such as developers and state and local officials. The collections include hard-to-find copies of documents on federal Superfund hazardous waste sites, water-quality data and the health of regional ecosystems.
A House committee opened an investigation Monday into potential conflicts of interest in scientific panels that advise the Environmental Protection Agency.
The House Energy and Commerce Committee cited the case of eight scientists who were consultants or members of EPA science advisory panels assessing the human health effects of toxic chemicals while getting research support from the chemical industry on the same chemicals they were examining.
In two cases, EPA advisers were employed by companies that made or worked with manufacturers of the chemicals being evaluated. the committee said.
In the end, then, what is called for is nothing more, and nothing less, than what all the world's great religions demand -- that we do unto others as we would have them do unto us. Let us be our brother's keeper, Scripture tells us. Let us be our sister's keeper. Let us find that common stake we all have in one another, and let our politics reflect that spirit as well.
For we have a choice in this country. We can accept a politics that breeds division, and conflict, and cynicism. We can tackle race only as spectacle -- as we did in the OJ trial -- or in the wake of tragedy, as we did in the aftermath of Katrina -- or as fodder for the nightly news. We can play Reverend Wright's sermons on every channel, every day and talk about them from now until the election, and make the only question in this campaign whether or not the American people think that I somehow believe or sympathize with his most offensive words. We can pounce on some gaffe by a Hillary supporter as evidence that she's playing the race card, or we can speculate on whether white men will all flock to John McCain in the general election regardless of his policies.
We can do that.
But if we do, I can tell you that in the next election, we'll be talking about some other distraction. And then another one. And then another one. And nothing will change.
When Senator Obama's preacher thundered about racism and injustice Obama suffered smear-by-association. But when my late father -- Religious Right leader Francis Schaeffer -- denounced America and even called for the violent overthrow of the US government, he was invited to lunch with presidents Ford, Reagan and Bush, Sr.
Every Sunday thousands of right wing white preachers (following in my father's footsteps) rail against America's sins from tens of thousands of pulpits. They tell us that America is complicit in the "murder of the unborn," has become "Sodom" by coddling gays, and that our public schools are sinful places full of evolutionists and sex educators hell-bent on corrupting children. They say, as my dad often did, that we are, "under the judgment of God." They call America evil and warn of immanent destruction. By comparison Obama's minister's shouted "controversial" comments were mild. All he said was that God should damn America for our racism and violence and that no one had ever used the N-word about Hillary Clinton.
Between 2002 and 2007, false beliefs in the private sector — the belief that home prices only go up, that financial innovation had made risk go away, that a triple-A rating really meant that an investment was safe — led to an epidemic of bad lending. Meanwhile, false beliefs in the political arena — the belief of Alan Greenspan and his friends in the Bush administration that the market is always right and regulation always a bad thing — led Washington to ignore the warning signs.He also has a suggested solution:
By the way, Mr. Greenspan is still at it: accepting no blame, he continues to insist that “market flexibility and open competition” are the “most reliable safeguards against cumulative economic failure.”
The result of all that bad lending was an unholy financial mess that will cause trillions of dollars in losses. A large chunk of these losses will fall on financial institutions: commercial banks, investment banks, hedge funds and so on.
Looking ahead, we probably need something similar to the Resolution Trust Corporation, which took over bankrupt savings and loan institutions and sold off their assets to reimburse taxpayers. And we need it quickly: things are falling apart as you read this.
I used to think that the major issues facing the next president would be how to get out of Iraq and what to do about health care. At this point, however, I suspect that the biggest problem for the next administration will be figuring out which parts of the financial system to bail out, how to pay the cleanup bills and how to explain what it's doing to an angry public.
-----Original Message-----
From: Leininger, Lisa [mailto:lleininger@BGCO.ORG]
Sent: Thursday, March 13, 2008 4:23 PM
To: DOMs
Subject: Representative Sally Kern
Good afternoon,
Dr. Jordan has asked me to pass along the contact information for Representative Sally Kern. As most of you know she has been under some very tight scrutiny lately about standing up against homosexuality. Many requests have been made to Dr. Jordan regarding what we can do for her as a fellow believer and southern Baptist. He would like you to share this information with all your churches inviting them to contact Rep. Kern via e-mail or a phone call to encourage her and offer support during this trying time. If you have any questions or if I can help you in any way please let me know.
Thank you for all you do! Have a great weekend!
Representative Sally Kern
sallykern@okhouse.gov
(405) 557-7348
Matter of fact, studies show that no society that has totally embraced Baptists has lasted more than, you know, a few decades. So it's the death nell to this country. I honestly think it's the biggest threat that our nation has -- even more so than terrorism, or anarchy, which I think is a big threat, OK? Because what's happening now, they're going after, in schools, two year olds!Actually, there was a time when statements similar to this were being made in this country. If Kern and Jordan have read anything about Baptists' struggle for religious liberty, they ought to know better than to speak like this about others.
The intensity of the critique of the New York governor, tied with the demand that he resign, shows more about American society's ethical perversity than about Spitzer.
The President of the United States and the Vice President, working in concert with several other high-ranking officers of our government, lied and distorted to get us involved in a war that has led to the death of over a million Iraqis, the displacement of three million more, the death of 4,000 Americans and the wounding of tens of thousands more. . . .
Meanwhile, our government has overtly engaged in torture, wiretapping of our phones, and violation of our human rights and the rights of people around the world. Senator Dianne Feinstein and Senator Charles Schumer voted to confirm as Attorney General a right-wing judge who refused to repudiate these crimes.
Matter of fact, studies show that no society that has totally embraced homosexuality has lasted more than, you know, a few decades. So it's the death nell to this country. I honestly think it's the biggest threat that our nation has -- even more so than terrorism, or Islam, which I think is a big threat, OK? Because what's happening now, they're going after, in schools, two year olds!Let's just make a few changes to her speech and see what she thinks. What if politically powerful politicians were saying:
Matter of fact, studies show that no society that has totally embraced the Jews has lasted more than, you know, a few decades. So it's the death nell to this country. I honestly think it's the biggest threat that our nation has -- even more so than terrorism, or communism, which I think is a big threat, OK? Because what's happening now, they're going after, in schools, two year olds!Maybe that's not strong enough for her to get the message. Truth is, there were plenty of evangelical Christians in Nazi Germany who didn't think statements like that were hate speech. So, what if politically powerful politicians were saying:
Matter of fact, studies show that no society that has totally embraced Christianity has lasted more than, you know, a few decades. So it's the death nell to this country. I honestly think it's the biggest threat that our nation has -- even more so than terrorism, or Islam, which I think is a big threat, OK? Because what's happening now, they're going after, in schools, two year olds!Can anyone imagine a right-wing evangelical, sensitive to even the slightest hint of persecution, sitting still for that?
In the last Congress, I was chairman of the Oversight and Investigations Subcommittee of the House Foreign Affairs Committee. In that capacity, I learned that in the time immediately leading up to the bombing of the Federal Building in Oklahoma City, convicted Oklahoma City bomber and murderer Terry Nichols had been in Cebu City in the Philippines. His stay in Cebu City coincided with another visitor to that city, al Qaeda's terrorist leader Ramsey Yousef. Interestingly, both Nichols and Yousef used similar bombs and methods just 2 years apart to blow up two American targets. Yousef was the mastermind of the first attack on the World Trade Center in 1993. Nichols was a coconspirator in the bombing of the Oklahoma City Federal Building in 1995.
By the way, I would like to acknowledge that today [Feb. 26, 2008] happens to be the 15-year anniversary of that first devastating attack on the World Trade Center.
These individuals, one American and one Arab, were responsible for planning two of the most lethal terrorist attacks on our countrymen in our history. We are to believe that by coincidence they ended up in an off-the-beaten-track city in the Southern Philippines? One doesn't have to be a conspiracy nut to understand that this coincidence is certainly worth looking into.
I started an official congressional investigation sanctioned by Henry Hyde, then the chairman of the International Relations Committee, to see whether Terry Nichols or his accomplice, Timothy McVeigh, had foreign help in their murderous terrorist bombing of the Alfred Murrah Building in Oklahoma City.
In light of the fact that Terry Nichols and Ramsey Yousef were both in Cebu City at the same time prior to hauntingly similar terrorist attacks, it was no stretch for a congressional investigative committee to be looking into this matter. However, the Bush administration felt quite differently. To those I had to deal with, it was "case closed, don't bother us.'' They had looked into the matter, and Congress should simply and blindly accept their conclusion that there was no Nichols-Yousef connection. "Don't bother us.'' This was at times bureaucratic laziness, and at other times it was clearly based on a disdain for congressional investigations and authority.
During my investigation, I secured Ramsey Yousef's cell phone records. The records were part of the phone calls that he made when he was in that New York City area in the months just prior to the bombing of the World Trade Center in 1993.
The phone records show that Ramsey Yousef made at least two phone calls to a row house in Queens, New York.
[[Page H1066]]
That row house was occupied by the cousin of Terry Nichols' Filipina wife. Let me repeat that. The terrorist bomber of the first World Trade Center attack, the nephew of al Qaeda 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammad, made phone calls to the same row house that was occupied by Terry Nichols' cousins-in-law just 2 months before he exploded the bomb in the garage of the World Trade Center 15 years ago. Another coincidence?
A report released last Friday by JPMorgan Chase was even blunter. It described what's happening as a "systemic margin call," in which the whole financial system is facing demands to come up with cash it doesn't have. (A financial joke making the rounds, via the blog Calculated Risk: "Who is this guy Margin that keeps calling me?")
The Fed's latest plan to break this vicious circle is -- as the financial Web site interfluidity.com cruelly but accurately describes it -- to turn itself into Wall Street's pawnbroker. Banks that might have raised cash by selling assets will be encouraged, instead, to borrow money from the Fed, using the assets as collateral. In a worst-case scenario, the Federal Reserve would find itself owning around $200 billion worth of mortgage-backed securities.
Some observers worry that the Fed is taking over the banks' financial risk. But what worries me more is that the move seems trivial compared with the size of the problem: $200 billion may sound like a lot of money, but when you compare it with the size of the markets that are melting down -- there are $11 trillion in U.S. mortgages outstanding -- it's a drop in the bucket.
Land, apparently feeling the pressure, has issued what he characterized as an apology. "In reviewing these criticisms I have learned some consider the word crude, if not obscene," he wrote. "I apologize for my ignorance of that fact."
But he's not done. In Land's twisted logic, it is he who is owed an apology: "I am deeply offended that anyone would interpret my remarks as anti-Semitic."
Huh? Let's see if I got this straight. Land directs a slur at an elected official who is a Jew, and when called on it, he apologizes--not for the remark itself--but for his own ignorance. Then he declares himself "deeply offended" that anyone would interpret his comments as anti-Semitic!
You can't make this up.
And, notice something else. Land's "apology" was for his own ignorance, not for his comment. Nor was the "apology" addressed to Senator Schumer, the target of his insult.
Land has been in Washington far too long. This is the kind of stunt that politicians pull with some regularly. They will make an offensive statement and then, when the pressure builds, they will apologize "if anyone was offended by my remarks." Notice that, as with Land, this is only the illusion of an apology, because when you deconstruct it the politician is not apologizing for his remarks. Not at all. The apology is conditional and puts the onus on the offended individual: "I apologize if anyone was offended by my remarks."
Similarly, Land's "apology" was no apology at all. It was sleight-of-hand. If he were an honorable man, he would take responsibility for his crudeness and insensitivity and address his apology directly to Senator Schumer, the man he insulted. Instead, Land pretends that it is he, the person who made the obscene remarks, who is owed an apology.
[Warren] Bass told colleagues that he gasped when he found a memo written by [Richard] Clarke to [Condolezza] Rice on September 4, 2001, exactly a week before the attacks, in which Clarke seemed to predict what was just about to happen. It was a memo that seemed to spill out all of Clarke's frustration about how slowly the Bush White House had responded to the cascade of terrorist threats that summer. The note was terrifying in its prescience.
"Are we serious about dealing with the al-Qaeda threat?" he asked Rice. "Decision makers should imagine themselves on a future day when the CSG [Counterterrorism Security Group] has not succeeded in stopping al-Qaeda attacks and hundreds of Americans lay dead in several countries, including the US.
Bass's colleagues said he knew instantly that the September 4 email was so sensitive -- and potentially damaging, especially to Rice -- that the White House would never voluntarily release a copy to the commission or allow him to take notes from the room if they came close to reproducing its language. Under a written agreement between the commission and the White House, notes could not "significantly reproduce" the wording of a classified document.
Bass decided he would have to try to memorise it in pieces, several sentences at a time, and then rush back to the commission to bat them out on a computer keyboard.
Vanity Fair has obtained confidential documents, since corroborated by sources in the U.S. and Palestine, which lay bare a covert initiative, approved by Bush and implemented by Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and Deputy National Security Adviser Elliott Abrams, to provoke a Palestinian civil war. The plan was for forces led by Dahlan, and armed with new weapons supplied at America’s behest, to give Fatah the muscle it needed to remove the democratically elected Hamas-led government from power. (The State Department declined to comment.)
But the secret plan backfired, resulting in a further setback for American foreign policy under Bush. Instead of driving its enemies out of power, the U.S.-backed Fatah fighters inadvertently provoked Hamas to seize total control of Gaza.
We're not just "losing" this tragic, arrogantly unplanned war in the conventional sense of failing to subdue our enemies -- we're committing slow socioeconomic suicide with its open-ended pursuit, losing, as we plunge recklessly into debt over it, our options, our ability to choose. We're losing the future.
"Because of the war, the national deficit is $2 trillion higher," Stiglitz, who won the Nobel Prize in economics in 2001, told me. "At 5 percent interest, that's $100 billion a year, year after year after year -- forever!"
However, SBC president Frank Page said that the covenant seemed intended to unify only one wing of Baptists.I've got news for Frank. "Southern Baptist" does not define the word "conservative." Genuine dialogue is well nigh impossible with people so arrogant that they think they are the only one with a right to speak.
"I have concerns when it seems this is organized and promoted by only those who are from a more moderate theological perspective," Page said. "One has to wonder if there is a true openness to a dialogue and an inclusion of conservatives."
Sen. John McCain's embrace of the endorsement of Texas televangelist, prosperity preacher, and Christian Zionist zealot John Hagee has led many astute and inquiring minds to ask: Will Tim Russert ask McCain to "reject and denounce" Hagee's support, just as he asked Sen. Barack Obama to "reject and denounce" the support of Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan -- even though Obama had never even asked for Farrakhan's support as McCain had solicited Hagee's?Posner has done a lot of research into the preaching and politics of prosperity gospel preachers like Hagee. Her new book, "God's Profits," is so thoroughly documented with abuses of the gospel that it should fill any conscientious Christian with shame and horror.
The answer, of course, is no, and here's why: Hagee is a good, white Christian leader -- controversial, inflammatory, and divisive to many, but a hero to millions of Americans and therefore to Republican candidates who want those millions of votes. But Hagee's influence doesn't end with his audience taken in by his "anointed" preaching or his claim to understand God's biblically-prophesied plan for the end of the world. For the neoconservative punditocracy, the fact that his eschatology aligns so nicely with their real politik objectives is more than a coalition-building convenience. Although someone like Bill Kristol, who is scheduled to speak at this year's Christians United for Israel (CUFI) summit, would probably not openly embrace Hagee's dispensationalism, the fact that marching to war is buttressed by a divine mandate helps build a shield of self-righteousness. How dare you patchouli-scented pacifists question us now?
So, essentially, what we’ve done over the past 30 years of deregulating banking and finance is create incentives for speculating and arbitrage, while creating disincentives for actual investment of capital in the real economy. We have shifted from industrial capitalism to financial capitalism. Rather than building a new economy of alternative energies and green technologies, Wall Street, U.S. elites, and the oilarchies have dug in to defend what they have. They have dug in to defend the past.
Other than the process of vetting a doctoral dissertation, defending the past is never a winning choice for an extended period of time. For Wall Street and U.S. elites, defending the past has led us into the worst financial crises since the Great Depression. But, worse, they are attempting to continue defending the past by pouring billions of dollars in new liquidity into the rotting financial system each day, creating a classic case of macro-inflation. I.e., wheat prices jumping 46% in just two months.
One place for voters to begin scrutinizing candidates would be to evaluate a candidate's integrity. The level of integrity can be measured through indicators such as how they conduct their campaigns. Candidates who run mean-spirited attacks on their opponents might be electable politicians, but they are not people of integrity.
Even when they disagree about individual strategies, however, Christians evaluating political candidates remain focused on the policies the candidates advocate. Political candidates should not be surprised if their professions of faith are met with skepticism by Christian voters. Personal piousness is not politically important. To sum up: it’s not the piety, it’s the policy, stupid.
Nevertheless, the religious faith of a candidate cannot absolutely determine his conduct of public office. He is subject to pressures, valid and proper, from many sides and sources. In weighing and reconciling them all, he necessarily compromises any absolute rigidities his denominational dogma might impose in addition to the teaching of Scripture. We hold that no church body can compel the unquestioning allegiance of its members in public office to its partisan ecclesiastical dictates. Any candidate who binds himself so thoroughly to partisan ecclesiastical domination thereby unfits himself for public office.
Mainstream Baptists oppose H.B. 2211 because it is too weak to adequately protect religious liberty and freedom of speech for all people.When legislators exercise "viewpoint discrimination" to pass their legislation, it's hard to see how it will be good for our public schools. Jones has set precedent for how to protect the approved viewpoint and stifle opposing perspectives.
Prayer is an act of worship. To suggest otherwise is to trivialize faith and belittle religion. Religious devotions and expressions are also acts of worship.
This nation was founded by people who refused to become a captive audience -- forced to listen to the prayers and preaching being led by the Church of England. That is why the Pilgrims came to America. That is why my Baptist forefathers came to America.
As written, this bill puts students in the same position as the early Pilgrims, Baptists, and Quakers. You will make them a captive audience -- forced listen to the prayers, preaching and devotions of people with whom their own conscience and convictions may forbid them to worship.
To correct this injustice, your legislation needs a conscience clause. It needs to be amended to permit anyone -- regardless of their position and status within the school -- to leave the room when prayers, preaching and devotions are being conducted. You also need to make it a crime for anyone to belittle, berate, bully or penalize any person who exercises their own first amendment right to worship according to the dictates of their own conscience by leaving the room during these acts.
The U.S. is currently spending hundreds of millions of dollars to pay the monthly salaries of some 600,000 armed fighters in the three rival ethnic camps in Iraq. These fighters-Shiite, Kurd and Sunni Arab-are not only antagonistic but deeply unreliable allies. The Sunni Arab militias have replaced central government officials, including police, and taken over local administration and security in the pockets of Iraq under their control. They have no loyalty outside of their own ethnic community. Once the money runs out, or once they feel strong enough to make a thrust for power, the civil war in Iraq will accelerate with deadly speed. The tactic of money-for-peace failed in Afghanistan. The U.S. doled out funds and weapons to tribal groups in Afghanistan to buy their loyalty, but when the payments and weapons shipments ceased, the tribal groups headed back into the embrace of the Taliban.
The Sunni Arab militias are known by a variety of names: the Iraqi Security Volunteers (ISVs), neighborhood watch groups, Concerned Local Citizens, Critical Infrastructure Security. The militias call themselves “sahwas” (”sahwa” being the Arabic word for awakening). There are now 80,000 militia fighters, nearly all Sunni Arabs, paid by the United States to control their squalid patches of Iraq. They are expected to reach 100,000. The Sunni Arab militias have more fighters under arms than the Shiite Mahdi Army and are about half the size of the feeble Iraqi army. The Sunni Awakening groups, which fly a yellow satin flag, are forming a political party.
The Sunni Arab militias, though they have ended attacks on U.S. forces, detest the Shiite-Kurdish government of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki and abhor the presence of U.S. troops on Iraqi soil. They take the money and the support with clenched teeth because with it they are able to build a renegade Sunni army, a third force inside Iraq, which they believe will make it possible to overthrow the central government. The Sunni Arabs, who make up about 40 percent of Iraq’s population, held most positions of power under Saddam Hussein. They dominated Iraq’s old officer corps. They made up its elite units, including the Republic Guard divisions and the Special Forces regiments. They controlled the intelligence agencies. There are several hundred thousand well-trained Sunni Arabs who lack only an organizational structure. We have now made the formation of this structure possible. These militias are the foundation for a deadlier insurgent force, one that will dwarf anything the United States faced in the past. The U.S. is arming, funding and equipping its own assassins.
After another study — this one by the Pentagon — found the average military borrower was repaying $834 for a $339 loan, Congress slapped a 36% annual interest-rate cap on payday loans to military members and their spouses. That level is tolerable if the loans are repaid promptly. Now, a few states are moving to offer the same protection to civilians.Oklahoma is not one of the states that is working to address the the injustice of charging 400% in annual interest. Oklahoma suffers under legislative leadership that is either hardhearted, irresponsible, myopic or any combination of the above. For proof, make a visit to the website for the Alliance for Oklahoma's Future and see the documentation regarding the consequences of recently enacted state income tax cuts.
"Nobody seemed to care because of who was profiting, on the one hand, and who was being exploited on the other," Jackson said. "But now the water is -- like the Titanic -- the water is up around the deck where the big people hang out. But where did the water come in? The water came in at the bottom of the ship. The poor always pay more for less -- for cars, goods and services, insurance, food, banking money. This time, however, it's affecting the whole economy, that's what is different about this. Again, if the government had not allowed the rich to get richer at the expense of the vulnerable you wouldn't have this crisis."One more thing, the "government" Jackson is talking about is "us" -- you and me.
Our research shows that a plurality of born again adults who are registered to vote are Democrats. Among the born agains, more than four out of 10 are registered Democrats, three out of ten are registered Republicans, and the remaining two out of 10 are independent. Things look very different among the evangelicals, though, where registered Republicans outnumber Democrats almost three-to-one. Maybe the insight to draw from all of this is that the mainstream media constantly try to simplify complex realities so that people can quickly understand the world. The problem is that some things get oversimplified, and understanding the faith community is one of those dimensions that gets misunderstood.
"I think faith-based inititives are fine except for four technical problems that need to be addressed.
1. It's bad for religion.
2. It's bad for the state.
3. It's bad for the poor.
4. It's unconstitutional.
Other than that, faith-based initiatives are just fine."
Published on my iPhone.
I can't blame the nameless staff person who wrote the essay for hesitating to sign his name to it. Who would want his name associated with such a juvenile essay?
I can and do blame the editor of the Baptist Messenger for printing the editorial. How can you look at yourself in a mirror when you know that you are publishing material so obviously distorted that no one is willing to take credit for writing it?
Published from my iPhone.
One example of successful renegotiation was reflected in the 1995 federal guidelines to school administrators. They were designed to make clear that while government cannot impose religion, neither can students be forced to be secular against their will; nor can their personal expressions of faith be silenced. Individual students were no longer to be stopped from praying. Jewish students could not be barred from wearing yarmulkes. Children who wanted to talk about religion on school grounds had the right to do so. A similar respect for individual expressions of faith has been extended to government workers.
This may have seemed like common sense, but it also reflected an awareness that the desire to preserve religious freedom entails keeping the government out of the way and protecting the free expression of believers. And it underscored the difference between an American approach to religious toleration aimed at accommodating religious expression and the French style of toleration (known as laïcité), which sought religious peace by clearing religion out of the public realm as much as possible. The conflicts that face France and other Western nations with large Muslim populations suggest that it is the American form of secularism that may, as the historian Wilfred McClay has written, provide "an essential basis for peaceful coexistence in a religiously pluralistic society." American-style secularism is rooted in a basic respect for religious traditions and not in hostility to religion. It has certainly eased the integration of new Muslim immigrants into the mainstream of American life. The American story suggests that despite the risks involved, respecting the public role of the many who believe, and who believe in diverse ways, is the more promising way to expand freedom's writ.
The Internal Revenue Service has opened an inquiry into an Aug. 11, 2007, "personal endorsement" of presidential candidate Mike Huckabee issued by Wiley Drake, pastor of First Southern Baptist Church of Buena Park, Calif., on church letterhead.The last paragraph of Kelly's report states:
Drake also was briefly in the media spotlight in 2006, when he created letterhead for himself as Southern Baptist Convention second vice president and used it to endorse a candidate for U.S. Senate. He received a stern warning from D. August Boto, the SBC's general counsel that such activities should cease.It is going to be hard for Drake to pretend that he had never been warned that it is illegal to write political endorsements on the letterhead of non-profit organizations. It's equally hard to believe that the reporters and editors at Baptist Press lack the understanding necessary to perceive that Americans United has raised a legitimate concern. Instead, they quote the propaganda of Wiley Drake's attorney without question or comment.
As Brother Hall points out, Southern Baptist churches send thousands of "messengers" to their annual meetings to, among other things, "elect leaders," and it was their votes that put Drake in his so-called "honorary" position. They knew Drake was a shrill and divisive figure, and they elected him anyway. Drake may be the crazy uncle in the SBC attic, Brother Hall, but he's your uncle, not mine. Don't try to disown him.For those who desire documentation of the fundamentalist takeover of the SBC, here's a link to the website for Mainstream Baptists and to an article about the effects of the takeover.
As far as Brother Hall's second point: it is a well known fact that a small cabal of powerful fundamentalist preachers and their allies established a well-organized campaign to take over the SBC. It is quite irrelevant that they exploited the SBC's "democratic" election process to achieve their goals.
What I'm more interested in is the SBC's stance on SBC presidential candidate (and former SBC second vice president) Drake's prayers for my death and the death of others on the AU staff. Brother Hall, do you agree with that call to prayer? Do other SBC leaders agree with it? If not, why haven’t you said so? Where is the SBC press release repudiating Drake's actions as un-Christian and un-American?
I see Mainstream Baptists strengthening their involvement in issues that CBF and other moderate Baptists find difficult to address aggressively. Every moderate church needs someone to be continually focused on assuring that every generation within the congregation is educated about the Baptist principles of soul freedom, Bible freedom, church freedom and religious freedom. Every state needs someone to monitor and address the actions of Christian fundamentalists―in every denomination―who are undermining the gospel, hijacking churches and organizing both denominational and political takeovers. Every community desperately needs someone to organize a network of Christian activists who will speak out on First Amendment issues, educate others about the Baptist legacy for liberty of conscience, challenge legislation that breaches the wall separating church and state, and foster respectful dialogue about differences between people of different faiths.
Republican Board MeetingFor further information check out Ben Cole's blog about Southwestern Seminary renting facilities to the Republican Party.
Tarrant County Republicans (2)
Tarrant County Republican Assembly (7)
Texas Republican Assembly
(Bob) Fischer said that for large numbers of social conservatives to entertain backing McCain, he would need to reverse himself on several positions, including his support for relaxing restrictions on federal funding for embryonic stem-cell research. Fischer said if McCain prevails short of doing that, he and many other conservatives "will not work as hard as we could" to elect him.Perhaps this is why Republicans are so eager for Mike Huckabee to abandon his Presidential campaign.
He then raised the possibility of Christian conservatives lining up behind the Constitution Party, citing its conservative moral stances and ability to get on state ballots, a steeper challenge for an entirely new party.
The Constitution Party, which calls itself "completely pro-life, pro-gun, pro-American sovereignty and independence," has secured spots on about 16 state ballots and hopes to exceed 40, national field director Gary Odom said. The party has nominated founder Howard Phillips as its presidential candidate in the past and will select its candidate in April.
Said Fischer: "The Republican Party needs to remember that (the Constitution Party) will nominate a conservative. If the Republican Party wants to avoid defeat in November, they need to do the same. There are no votes to waste in this election."
45. Defendant Patterson’s use of the Seminary to advance his own non-ecclesiastical personal and/or political beliefs is also demonstrated by the fact that he leases a portion of the Seminary property to the Republican Party.My guess is that everybody is getting a sweetheart deal out of this transaction. The GOP is financially supporting the authoritarian theology of its fundamentalist base and the seminary is teaching students how to spread the authoritarian ideology of its neo-conservative political allies.
Goodman: Michael Ratner, you're the president of the Center for Constitutional Rights. Your response?
Michael Ratner: You know, when Robert called me to talk about this story and what he had found, essentially the key chapters being based substantially on evidence from torture, I actually was really shocked by it. I mean, I didn't know that. I work in this field, and I didn't know that. And I was shocked by it because we all know that our own court cases have said evidence from torture is not reliable. And here you have a report that's supposed to tell us what actually happened in its key chapters on the planning of 9/11, what actually happened when the people came into the country, and you look at those footnotes, and they're based on torture. What it has to tell you is to be very, very skeptical about a number of the conclusions in that report. You just can't rely on evidence of torture. We all know that. Think about it. If the Bhutto assassination -- if the government of Pakistan issued a report, and we knew it came out of torture, would any of us be sitting at this table believing it? Would we believe that about the assassination of Kennedy, if it came out of tortured people? No, we wouldn't. Why are we accepting this? That's not saying it's not true, but it's saying we have a big problem here now, because we have evidence of torture.
The public denigration of Islam, and by implication all religious belief systems outside Christianity, is part of the triumphalism that has distorted the country since the 9/11 attacks. It makes dialogue with those outside our “Christian” culture impossible. It implicitly condemns all who do not think as we think and believe as we believe as, at best, inferior and usually morally depraved. It blinds us to our own failings. It makes self-reflection and self-criticism a form of treason. It reduces the world to a cartoonish vision of us and them, good and evil. It turns us into children with bombs.
Baptists in America may never be the same. For one shining moment in Atlanta, at a three-day gathering termed a “celebration”, Baptists were called to repent of their long history of racism and sexism and affirm a New Baptist Covenant. Never before in the 400-year history of the Baptist denomination have black Baptists and white Baptists met with equal participation on the platform and equal numbers in the audience; never before in history have Baptists – black and white, male and female – met with more than token representation of prophetic women speaking from the pulpit; never before in history have moderate and progressive Baptists from North and South and Canada and Mexico met together to network and organize for Christian social action. If this moment becomes a movement, as its organizers hope and intend, then by re-orienting the Baptist denomination it may also help to change the political priorities of the nation.
Bailey Nelson, the program's coordinator, said her involvement has been an inspiration.
"I am overwhelmed by the diversity of the group and the passion they show," Nelson said. "They are driven and hungry. Their big question is: What's next?"
Nelson said the meeting has been a watershed moment for many members of the group who are beginning to understand their role as Baptists.
"We can't wait for others to tell us what to do. It's time for us to decide for ourselves," she said. "It's not about becoming members of the power structure; it's about developing relationships."
Because there had been no contact among the seminarians prior to this week, Nelson said the students are exploring ways to keep in touch after the event. "There's been talk about starting a Facebook group to stay connected with each other through e-mail, and there are others who are talking about collaborating on a book."
"The Celebration of a New Baptist Covenant is not an effort to form something together, it is an effort to say something together -- about what we ought to be doing together."What we ought to be doing together is taking seriously what Jesus took seriously -- promoting peace with justice, feeding the hungry, clothing the naked, sheltering the homeless, caring for the sick and marginalized, visiting the imprisoned and welcoming strangers.
