Tag: news

“You’re a failure as a human being if you haven’t accepted Jesus as your personal savior” – the late Jerry Falwell

It doesn’t get any sillier than this … and an example of why Christians have a lot of cleanup work to do … I wonder if 2000 years ago the first Christian (Jesus) accepted Jesus as his personal savior.

A HISTORY LESSON FROM OUR RECENT PAST

Remember this guy?

New Alabama Governor: Only Christians Are My Brothers And Sisters
Gov. Robert Bentley (R-AL)
By Eric Lach|
January 18, 2011 6:46 a.m.

Speaking on Martin Luther King Jr. Day in the very church where Dr. King once pastored, new Alabama Gov. Robert Bentley gave a speech in which he said that those who have not accepted Jesus Christ as their savior are not his “brothers.”

Bentley spoke at the Dexter Avenue King Memorial Baptist Church in Montgomery just minutes after taking the oath of office on Monday. The new governor, who has been a deacon at First Baptist Church in Tuscaloosa, first said that though he ran as a Republican, once he took office he “became the governor of all the people.”

“I am color blind,” Bentley said, according to The Birmingham News.
But Bentley then said that only those who are Christians and “saved” like he is are his brothers and sisters.

“There may be some people here today who do not have living within them the Holy Spirit,” Bentley said. ”But if you have been adopted in God’s family like I have, and like you have if you’re a Christian and if you’re saved, and the Holy Spirit lives within you just like the Holy Spirit lives within me, then you know what that makes? It makes you and me brothers. And it makes you and me brother and sister.”

Bentley stopped just short of calling for non-Christians to accept Jesus Christ.

Only Christians are my brothers and sisters

The president of the national Interfaith Alliance, the Rev. Welton Gaddy, said Bentley went too far.

“I thought that with his statement he created two classes of citizens in Alabama, those that were his brothers and sisters in Christ and everyone else. As an elected official, he has the responsibility to serve all the people and treat all the people equally,”

The Anti-Defamation League, a Jewish group that fights discrimination, said it sounded like Bentley was using the office of governor to advocate for Christian conversion. ADL regional director Bill Nigut:

“If he does so, he is dancing dangerously close to a violation of the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution, which forbids government from promoting the establishment of any religion,”

Christian supporters outraged that this evangelical fundamentalist politician would be challenged for his religious beliefs, might ask, “What’s the big deal?”

No big deal so long as the wisest point of view in retrospect is that of Retired University of Alabama political scientist William Stewart,

“I don’t think the governor needs to get into things like who is going to be in the kingdom and who isn’t going to be in the kingdom.”

No matter the intensity of personal belief and desire that this be a country founded on Christian beliefs, it’s not. The governor speaking as governor needs to talk government talk and avoid the mixing in the theology of his own beliefs that make him sound both devout and arbitrarily separating his constituency into two camps of differing worthiness.

That is not freedom of religion in America, but the very thing that early evangelical activists pushed Thomas Jefferson to work toward, a separation that does not permit the rise of one religious point of view “authorized” by a secular government.

Or remember these guys?

I have not been impressed with either Cisco or Pancho, Supreme Court Justices, the late Antonin Scalia and still-sitting Clarence Thomas for a longer time; longer than their unconstitutional interference in our electoral process that resulted in placing a Bush who lost the presidential election in office.

Scalia’s after-the-fact justifications have repeatedly and grossly fallen short, despite their confident arrogance in terms of his pretended “strict” view of the Constitution. Thomas, on the other hand has been little more than a tag-a-long sidekick to the more celebrated and respected conservative court colleagues.

Now it seems that Cisco and Pancho had been playing around with the wrong crowd at the same time they have been pretending to strictly uphold wise Constitutional concepts.

The entire Citizens United decision was bogus from the get go and put into effect solely based on a majority defined by partisan political values, not to mention obvious lobbied funding.

Citizens United essentially supports the idea of a corporation as a person with the same legal rights that I as an American citizen have. In reality the ruling supports the practice that a corporate “person” having access to massive financial resources, is not comparable one-to-one with little old me with my access to severely limited financial resources.

Lobbying equality on the part of greedy corporate “persons” and vulnerable individual human citizen persons in the United States of America would be a laugher if it wasn’t so tragic.

The ruling was bogus and I’m still wishing Common Cause all the success in the world.

On the first anniversary of the Supreme Court’s ruling in Citizens United, which overturned nearly a century of restrictions on campaign spending, a progressive group has asked the Department of Justice to look into “conflicts of interest” two justices may have had when issuing the ruling.

In a petition to be sent to the department this week, Common Cause will argue that Justices Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas should have recused themselves from the campaign finance decision because of their involvement with Koch Industries, a corporation run by two conservative activists who many say directly benefited from Citizens United.

“It appears both justices have participated in political strategy sessions, perhaps while the case was pending, with corporate leaders whose political aims were advanced by the decision,” the letter alleges, as quoted at Politico.

The group will urge the department to disqualify Scalia and Thomas from the ruling. If that were to happen, the Supreme Court could vacate the ruling, effectively returning the campaign finance restrictions that existed until 2010. But, as Common Cause itself admits, the odds are against it.

And how about an accurate second opinion on the Citizens United Supreme Court Majority Voters?

Justices Alito, Kennedy, Roberts, Scalia and Thomas

Charges: Their majority opinion in Citizens United v. FEC was the worst decision since Scalia instituted SCOTUS Hot Pants Fridays.

In lifting a century-long restriction on corporate campaign spending, the Justices flouted a firmly-ingrained precedent and finally provided examples of the nefarious and mythical “Activist Judge.”

The original case dealt with the very narrow issue of whether Citizen’s hit-piece/documentary Hillary: The Movie was “electioneering communication” under McCain-Feingold. A district court panel ruled that it was and, hence, could be regulated. Citizens appealed, and the Roberts court took it upon itself to hear the case and inexplicably broaden its scope into a corporate free-speech issue.

This is the very definition of “legislating from the bench” and ensures our elections will be dominated by well-funded Swift Boating for the foreseeable future. If democracy was an experiment, this case blew up the lab. – Murphy, The Beast Blog

More details in the Common Cause filed with the DOJ

The letter refocuses attention on a series of investigations conducted by ThinkProgress about the Supreme Court’s right flank — Justices Samuel Alito, Thomas, and Scalia — and their relationship with the corporate right:

– In November, ThinkProgress interviewed Justice Alito as he entered the annual fundraising gala for the American Spectator, attended by then-RNC Chairman Michael Steele and top Republican donors.

Alito told us that his attendance to the fundraiser was “not important.” However, as we noted, Alito was the main draw for donors when he headlined the same event in 2008. The American Spectator is nominally a magazine; in the 90s, it served as a slush fund for wealthy donors to pay opponents of President Clinton, and recently, it organized a lobby group called the “Conservative Action Project” to orchestrate opposition to President Obama.

– In 2009, while the Supreme Court heard arguments regarding the Citizens Unitedcase, Justice Thomas was featured at the annual fundraiser for the Heritage Foundation — and sat at a table for donors with investment banker Thomas Saunders and Sen. Jim DeMint (R-SC). After the Citizens United decision, Heritage created a new nonprofit called “Heritage Action” to run attack ads against Democrats.

– In 2009, while the Supreme Court heard arguments regarding the Citizens United case, Justice Alito headlined a fundraiser for the Intercollegiate Studies Institute(ISI) — the same corporate front that funded the rise of Republican dirty trickster James O’Keefe and anti-masturbation activist Christine O’Donnell. According to the sponsorship levels for the event, Alito helped ISI raise $70,000 or more from law firms like Young Conaway Stargatt & Taylor, LLP. ISI is run partially by lobbyist James Burnley, who also is on the board of FreedomWorks.

– Last year, Justice Thomas helped headline a fundraiser for the National Association of Broadcasters, a lobby group representing News Corp, Cox Media Group, and other media companies. The event raised hundreds of thousands for NAB’s charity from a host of corporate sponsors, including the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, PhRMA, and CBS Corp.

God and Politics Run Amok