Dispatches from the Culture War
November 19, 2009
09:37
On tonight's Declaring Independence:
Spencer Ackerman will be on discussing Afghanistan and other foreign policy challenges facing the Obama administration.
Nat Hentoff will be on for the second time, but this time we'll be mostly discussing jazz history.
As always, you can listen to the show live between 6 and 7 pm EST by clicking here. Read the comments on this post...
09:23
It turns out that those rumors from an Alaskan activist about Palin being a creationist were true. Not that anyone should be shocked by this; given Palin's religious views it would be extremely shocking if she was not a creationist. But a CBN reporter cites more evidence from her book.
According to a review published Sunday in The New York Times, Palin knocks evolution in her new book.
Elsewhere in this volume, she talks about creationism, saying she "didn't believe in the theory that human beings -- thinking, loving beings -- originated from fish that sprouted legs and crawled out of the sea" or from "monkeys who eventually swung down from the trees." In everything that happens to her, from meeting Todd to her selection by Mr. McCain for the Republican ticket, she sees the hand of God: "My life is in His hands. I encourage readers to do what I did many years ago, invite Him in to take over." Read the rest of this post... | Read the comments on this post...
09:16
From our old friend Joseph Farah:
Further, I would suggest to you the big "take-away" from any biblical study of the death penalty would suggest that it is the very basis of God's rules for governance on Earth. It's the very foundation. Take it away and you take away the very underpinning of a Judeo-Christian civilization.
Sounds like another good reason to get rid of the death penalty. Read the comments on this post...
09:09
I have to disagree with this post by my friend and co-blogger Jason Kuznicki. This is not something I do lightly because I have such enormous respect for Jason, but I really think he's wrong on this. And he is directly addressing an argument I've made many times in the past:
Supporters of same-sex marriage like to say that opponents should enjoy their moment now -- because it's not going to last. Polls routinely show that older Americans oppose same-sex marriage, while younger ones support it. A cohort replacement effect will soon usher in solid majorities for same-sex marriage, the argument goes.
This strikes me as both sloppy and complacent. Read the rest of this post... | Read the comments on this post...
09:02
My CIM colleague John Tomasic notes that the anti-gay National Organization for Marriage has quietly dropped Carrie Prejean after so famously promoting her in the wake of her fake martyrdom in the Miss USA pageant.
Carrie Prejean, the decrowned Miss California and darling of the Christian right, appears to have been scrubbed from the National Organization for Marriage website. The move comes in the wake of a TMZ interview with the man whom Prejean reportedly met through MySpace and had a four-day hotel fling with in 2007. He alleges Prejean sent a series of sex tapes to him over the next couple of years. It's the latest chapter in the story of Prejean's partygirl past, which keeps leaking into the public sphere, ruining what had been her budding career as a Christian-values conservative politics spokesperson. Read the rest of this post... | Read the comments on this post...
November 18, 2009
09:30
Matt Barber has his typically hysterical screed about how evil those infernal gays are and how Christians are truly the persecuted minority in this country. Referring to comments left on the JoeMyGod blog, he writes:
Blog poster "ColdCountry" wrote: "Will someone please give me a gun?" Poster "Fritz" warned: "What I fear is that once gay and lesbian people give up hope of achieving equality through nonviolent means, there will be radicals who will begin to hunt down haters... All it will take is a small group of radical zealots who are willing to kill for their cause."
In reply to Fritz, "tex" posted: "Fritz....you say this like it's a bad thing? Maybe a bit of well organized terrorism is just what we need." Read the rest of this post... | Read the comments on this post...
09:23
Marcy Wheeler does a brilliant job of mining the transcripts of the healthcare reform debate to show that Republican legislators were literally reading from a script written for them by lobbyists from Genentech. One after another they took to the podium to parrot the exact same phrases Genentech wanted them to parrot. From a post entitled What a Roomful of Republican Biotech-Paid Whores Looks Like, here's the first example: Read the rest of this post... | Read the comments on this post...
09:16
Here's a hilarious video from an anti-illegal immigration rally in Minnesota last Saturday called the Tea Party Against Amnesty. A young man calling himself Robert Erickson got up to the podium and began a righteous rant about the evils of immigration, how waves of immigrants had brought diseases to America and taken jobs from Americans. "Are you with me?" he asked the cheering crowd as he yelled that it was time to send the immigrants back where they came from: Europe. It took a while before a few of the gathered crowd caught on that they were being punked, right about the time a bunch of counter-protestors began changing "Columbus go home." Video below the fold. Read the rest of this post... | Read the comments on this post...
09:09
Here's an astonishing story out of Georgia, where a man accused of murder has sat in prison for four years without a trial because the state can't afford to pay for his legal defense.
An accused killer from Pike County has sat in jail for nearly four years without a trial -- not because of any problems with the evidence but because the state is seeking the death penalty and cannot pay for the man's defense.
The case, argued Tuesday before the Georgia Supreme Court, could determine whether Georgia can afford the death penalty. Read the rest of this post... | Read the comments on this post...
November 17, 2009
09:37
A commenter on Jonathan Turley's blog (scroll way down to Nov. 16th, a comment by Vince Treacy) pointed this out and it looks like he's right. The C Street House, which has been scamming the city of Washington DC by pretending to be a church and therefore being exempt from taxes, has now been reassigned as residential and assessed for property taxes.
You can find the details here on the DC city website. It is now listed as residential and taxable and valued at $1,834,500. And here it shows that they paid their property taxes of $1,714.70 on October 21. Now they should go after the tens of thousands of dollars in back taxes they owe. Read the comments on this post...
09:30
On ABC's This Week, conservative David Brooks called Sarah Palin "a joke" but said newly elected Va. Governor Bob McDonnell is the future of the GOP because he's "serious" and "pragmatic."
She's a joke. I mean, I just can't take her seriously. We've got serious problems in the country. Barack Obama's trying to handle war. We've just a had guy elected Virginia governor who's probably the model for the future of the Republican Party, Bob McDonnell, pretty serious guy, pragmatic, calm, kind of boring. The idea that this potential talk show host is considered seriously for the Republican nomination -- believe me, it'll never happen. Republican primary voters are just not going to elect a talk show host. Read the rest of this post... | Read the comments on this post...
09:23
I've spared few words making fun of Matthew Staver, the breathtakingly stupid dean of the Liberty University law school and head of the absurdly misnamed fourth-rate Christian legal group Liberty Counsel over the last few years. His latest expression of faux-outrage perfectly demonstrates why. He's got his knickers in a twist because the ACLU wants a school in Alabama to allow a lesbian couple to go to the prom (and he's going to be even more upset, since the school district has now agreed to do so).
OneNewsNow, the AFA's news site, reports on Staver's reaction, which is ridiculous both because he unwittingly says the obvious of what he intended to say and because what he intended to say is so utterly wrongheaded. Read the rest of this post... | Read the comments on this post...
09:16
The Freedom From Religion Foundation has written a letter to the Indianapolis Public Schools superintendent demanding that they change a written policy (PDF) that requires all "alternative spirituality" websites to be blocked from computers in their schools. The policy includes a list of sites that must be blocked, including this:
Sites that promote and provide information on religions such as Wicca, Witchcraft or Satanism. Occult practices, atheistic views, vodoo rituals or any form of mysticism are represented here. Includes sites that endorse or offer methods, means of instruction, or other resources to affect or influence real events through the use of spells, incantations, curses and magic powers. This category includes sites which discuss or deal with paranormal or unexplained events. Read the rest of this post... | Read the comments on this post...
09:09
This is actually about a week old but still worth commenting on. Last Wednesday was Veteran's Day but one group of vets, the American Legion post in Bloomington, Minnesota, says that if they can't force kids to sit through prayers they want no part in celebrating the day at a local school. And they're not going to give any scholarships to those kids either.
"My guys say if they can't do the ceremony they've done for 40 years, they won't do it," said Terry Selle, commander of American Legion Post 550. The Legion also will hold back scholarships estimated at $25,000 to $30,000. Read the rest of this post... | Read the comments on this post...
09:02
Today's badass quote of the day comes from one of the commenters on this site, in response to the beatdown poor Pat has received. As much as I hate D & D, the references here are well played and the whole comment is perfectly crafted. And I love his ideas for more Biblical plagues. The comment was left by a guy named Bob and, as far as I know, this was his first comment on the blog. I hope he keeps them coming. Read the rest of this post... | Read the comments on this post...
November 16, 2009
09:30
I've never been an Ann Althouse fan. I usually find her to be intolerably prissy and annoying. But boy did she unload on Sarah Palin after seeing a brief excerpt of her new book on the Drudge Report. And rightfully so. The excerpt is drowning in faux self-pity and ends up making Palin look worse rather than better.
The excerpt deals with the decision to give the first interview to Katie Couric and she basically throws one of the McCain campaign's advisers under the bus for that decision. But as Althouse points out, the fact that Palin silently went along with what is by her own admission little more than self-serving emotional blackmail by the adviser shows that she's not even remotely prepared to run the country. Read the rest of this post... | Read the comments on this post...
09:23
In a rather odd interview with The Atlantic, Rep. Bart Stupak accused opponents of his controversial amendment to ban all abortion coverage of distorting what his amendment does and repeatedly said that the amendment didn't actually change anything at all.
Referring to the Hyde Amendment, a law passed in 1976 that prohibits federal money from being used to pay for abortions under any circumstances, Stupak said over and over again that his amendment merely maintained that current law. Read the rest of this post... | Read the comments on this post...
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