Letter From a Nam Vet: Democrats attack the Church

A friend of a friend, who shall remain nameless, writes:

As you know, I am blessed to know and be connected to two great religions, sharing Judaism and Catholicism from my maternal Grandmother and paternal Grandmother, respectively. My sense of connection to both runs within me, and I know your beliefs run deep within you. I am writing to you today to tell you about a sermon delivered today by our Priest. He has all but named the president as the anti-Christ. Whatever your beliefs, this is significant, for I think he is correct. Biblical references aside, the Democrats and through their agents in government are attacking the very fundamental principles of America.

Specifically cited today was the recent attempt by the Connecticut state legislature to force the Catholic Church to be re-organized. See the attached article.

Although the bill was been "put aside", there will be other attempts by the democrats at every level of government to silence dissent. What is the next step after silencing religion, the freedom of speech, and right to bear arms, to gather?

Please share this with others, we need alert those who are asleep, we must keep alert and raise a loud voice of discontent, or our last stop will be into the showers, following a train ride. We can't afford to be a Chamberlain, we need to be Jeffersonian.

The article to which the Captain refers is, indeed, a disturbing one.

Conn. Legislature Moves to Regulate Catholic Church in Suspected "Payback" for Marriage Stance

The Connecticut Judiciary committee Thursday proposed a bill stripping Roman Catholic bishops of their authority to govern fiscal and administrative diocesan affairs - an unprecedented attempt to regulate the Catholic Church, that critics are calling "payback" for the Church's efforts to prevent the legalization of same-sex "marriage" in the state.

The explicit intent of S.B. 1098 is, "To revise the corporate governance provisions applicable to the Roman Catholic Church and provide for the investigation of the misappropriation of funds by religious corporations."

Referring specifically to structures of the Roman Catholic Church, the bill states: "The corporation shall have a board of directors consisting of not less than seven nor more than thirteen lay members. The archbishop or bishop of the diocese or his designee shall serve as an ex-officio member of the board of directors without the right to vote."

According to the bill, members of the board are to be elected from among the congregation, and the authority of the bishop and pastor limited to "matters pertaining exclusively to religious tenets and practices."

(To view the legislation, go to: http://www.cga.ct.gov/2009/TOB/S/2009SB-01098-R00-SB.htm)

Andrew McDonald and Michael Lawlor, co-chairs of the Judiciary committee, say the bill was proposed as a response to an incident in which a priest was convicted of stealing 1.4 million dollars from a parish in Darien...

Lawlor, in an email posted by American Papist blogger Thomas Peters, justified the bill by claiming it changed "current state statutes governing Roman Catholic corporations" as "suggested by parishioners who were the victims of theft of their funds in several parishes, who felt existing laws 'prevented them from dealing with the misuse and theft of funds.'"

"I agree with you that the whole notion of having a statute governing the church seems like an intrusion on the separation of church and state, but the current law does that already," Lawlor wrote, who emphasized that corporate law "probably should make sure there cannot be deception of parishioners."

...Many have raised concerns of the bill's constitutionality. Attorney Philip Lacovara, a Bridgeport Catholic, told the committee: "In more than forty years as a constitutional law teacher and practitioner, I cannot recall a single piece of proposed legislation at any level of government that more patently runs afoul of [the First Amendment]" than the bill in question. U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops general counsel Anthony Picarello also expressed shock at legislation "so blatantly unconstitutional," according to the National Catholic Register.

The Knights of Columbus, the Family Institute of Connecticut, and Connecticut Catholic Conference as well as individual bishops are calling on Catholics and non-Catholics alike to intercept the bill, which is being denounced as a dire and unprecedented threat to religious groups' right to self-government.

Peter Wolfgang of the Family Institute of Connecticut explained the need for an interfaith presence at the Wednesday hearing. "As Ben Franklin told the Founders while they were signing the Declaration of Independence, 'either we hang together or we will all hang separately,'" said Wolfgang. "Legislators need to understand that this bill is an attack on everyone's religious liberty."

..."Our church in the state of Connecticut is facing an unprecedented intrusion by the state legislature into its own internal affairs," Bridgeport's Bishop William Lori told parishioners Friday. "If this bill were to be enacted, your bishop would have virtually no real relationship with the 87 parishes.

"You have to understand how radically this departs from the teaching of the Church and the discipline of the Church, and how gravely unconstitutional it is for a state to move in and try to reorganize the internal structure of the Church. It is a violation, a grave violation of religious liberty."

Lori scoffed at the notion that the state, which now has a billion-dollar deficit, proposed the bill out of a need for greater regulation of Church finances.

"This bill was dropped into the hopper the day before the same-sex 'marriage' bill was to be heard," said Lori. "This is a thinly-veiled attempt to silence the Church on important issues of the day - but especially with regard to marriage."

Both committee co-chairs McDonald and Lawler are outspoken same-sex "marriage" advocates, and have been critical of the Catholic Church's opposition to laws dismantling the legal definition of marriage.

"The real purpose of this bill is payback to the bishops and pastors of the Roman Catholic Church in Connecticut for opposing gay marriage," State Sen. Michael McLachlan of Danbury wrote in his blog...

What is it with these Democrats? Did they skip school on the days that the the Constitution was being taught?

The Anchoress, Hot Air's Ed Morrissey and Wizbang were on this story from the get go. The bill may have been tabled for the moment, but continued vigilance is the watchword.

This attempt certainly won't be the last by Democrats bent on silencing dissent.

I seem to remember that there's a word for National Socialist Democrats. From the history books. But it's escaping me for the moment.

Kurt Westergaard Still The Only European With Backbone

Danish caricaturist Kurt Westergaard, who recently published another Islam critic Mohammad cartoon (with two bomb-in-turban Mohammads), is the only well-known European who openly supports Geert Wilders and the broadcasting of the movie "Fitna".

Not a single politician has had the courage to do the same.

But then again, Mr. Westergaard is the one who needs police protection 24 hours a day because the islamotards want to chop his head off.

The European politicians couldn't care less.

Kurt Westergaard: "Never limit the freedom of speech":

ÅRHUS - Dutch politician Geert Wilders should definitely air his anti-Quranfilm, Danish cartoonist Kurt Westergaard says Monday in an exclusive interview in the Dutch newspaper ‘de Volkskrant’.

Westergaard says he does not understand Dutch politicians who say that Wilders should not air his film. ‘There is not a single politician in Denmark that would state a similar thing. That would mean political suicide for him. Every Danish politician knows you should never limit the freedom of speech.’

Westergaard does not regret his caricatures of the prophet Muhammad ‘at all’. ‘It started out as and still is a matter of freedom of speech.’ Westergaard considers starting this debate as a ‘duty’ of newspapers and cartoonists. ‘Muslims are to accept that.’

Which many of the misunderstanders haven't. To them, Mr. Westergaard is the extremist:

The Danish cartoonist loathes the role of members of the Muslim elite, because they compare him to ‘an extremist like Osama bin Laden’. Westergaard: ‘After the nazis, fascists and communists there is a new totalitarian force threathening Europe, of course not Muslims as a group, but a number of extremists’.

Westergaard considers his cartoons perfectly acceptable and thinks ‘everything’ should be able to be said in democracies as Denmark and the Netherlands. If Muslims feel offended by that, they should ‘learn’ to cope with that. ‘We live in a tolerant society. This is the way we do this here.’

The other alternative is to start consulting the Muslim elite before publishing anything that might be "offensive".

Is that the goal of the European politicians?

As of today, so it seems.

That's the real disgrace.

Crossposted

How Much Does It Take For The Saudi Press To Blanch?

This much:

JIZAN, 7 March 2008 — Saudi tradition holds that people tend to marry young. But when families in the southwestern region of Saudi Arabia wedded a 12-year-old boy to his 11-year-old cousin, even the Saudi press blanched.

Home from primary school, get married and then back to primary school.

Repelling.

Crossposted

Movie About Religion of Peace Needs Anti-Terror Screening

Dutch Prime Minister Jan Peter Balkenende is doing his best to block the anti-islam movie "Fitna".

Now Geert Wilders has been obliged agreed to screen the film for the dutch anti-terror coordinator.

First time in history? Don't know, but hey, what can go wrong? After all, the movie is about the Religion of Peace!

Mr. Wilders also has a few words for the Prime Minister:

Anti-Islam MP Geert Wilders says he will allow the Dutch anti-terrorism coordinator to see his controversial anti-Koran film before it is released, but only on condition that the viewing is not used as and excuse to ban it, NOS tv reports on Tuesday.

Earlier the Telegraaf said Wilders had refused to show the 10-minute film to Tjibbe Joustra, who is responsible for Wilders' security.

Wilders also blamed prime minister Jan Peter Balkenende for ‘all the trouble to come’, according to NOS. Balkenende is a ‘weak, frightened man who gives way to threats’, Wilders, leader of the PVV anti-immigration party said.

Update: Wilders says his film is legal:

The leader of the right-wing Freedom Party, Geert Wilders says there is nothing illegal about his anti-Qur'an film Fitna. He is negotiating with a number of television stations about their broadcasting the film, under the condition that it be sent out in its entirety.

Mr Wilders hopes to find a television station willing to broadcast the 15-minute film within the next few days; otherwise he will show it at a press conference later this month and then broadcast it via the internet. He is willing to show the film to National Anti-Terrorism Coordinator Tjebbe Joustra one day before its broadcast. However, he wants a guarantee that the film will not be banned. Sources in the Justice Department say such a guarantee cannot be given.

Crossposted

Basra, Iraq: "I hate Islam"

There is a change going on in the Middle East:

After almost five years of war, many young people in Iraq, exhausted by constant firsthand exposure to the violence of religious extremism, say they have grown disillusioned with religious leaders and skeptical of the faith that they preach.

In two months of interviews with 40 young people in five Iraqi cities, a pattern of disenchantment emerged, in which young Iraqis, both poor and middle class, blamed clerics for the violence and the restrictions that have narrowed their lives.

“I hate Islam and all the clerics because they limit our freedom every day and their instruction became heavy over us,” said Sara, a high school student in Basra. “Most of the girls in my high school hate that Islamic people control the authority because they don’t deserve to be rulers.”

Atheer, a 19-year-old from a poor, heavily Shiite neighborhood in southern Baghdad, said: “The religion men are liars. Young people don’t believe them. Guys my age are not interested in religion anymore.”

...

But a shift seems to be registering, at least anecdotally, in the choices some young Iraqis are making.

Professors reported difficulty in recruiting graduate students for religion classes. Attendance at weekly prayers appears to be down, even in areas where the violence has largely subsided, according to worshipers and imams in Baghdad and Falluja.

...

A professor at Baghdad University’s School of Law, who identified herself only as Bushra, said of her students: “They have changed their views about religion. They started to hate religious men. They make jokes about them because they feel disgusted by them.”

...

Violent struggle against the United States was easy to romanticize at a distance.

“I used to love Osama bin Laden,” proclaimed a 24-year-old Iraqi college student. She was referring to how she felt before the war took hold in her native Baghdad. The Sept. 11, 2001, strike at American supremacy was satisfying, and the deaths abstract.

Now, the student recites the familiar complaints: Her college has segregated the security checks; guards told her to stop wearing a revealing skirt; she covers her head for safety.

“Now I hate Islam,” she said, sitting in her family’s unadorned living room in central Baghdad. “Al Qaeda and the Mahdi Army are spreading hatred. People are being killed for nothing.”

...

There is a new favorite game in the lively household of the young Baghdad journalist. When they see a man with a turban on television, they yell and crack jokes. In one joke, people are warned not to give their cellphone numbers to a religious man.

“If he knows the number, he’ll steal the phone’s credit,” the journalist said. “The sheiks are making a society of nonbelievers.”

Read it all - Violence Leaves Young Iraqis Doubting Clerics

Crossposted

Pakistan: Islamic Child Militancy

It is the major problem:

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan: Poverty, a culture of weapons and reliance on schools that teach little but religion have fostered a growing wave of child militants, particularly in Pakistan's troubled tribal areas, experts said Thursday.

"Islamic militancy, in and of itself, is the major problem," said Attiya Inayatullah, a board member of the Society for the Protection of the Rights of the Child. "Any use or exploitation of a child is unacceptable. We need to have a strong movement that says 'no.'"

Pro-Taliban militants have asserted growing control over Pakistan's impoverished northwest in recent years, challenging the authority of the state. As well as trying to impose an extreme brand of Islam, they have also recruited youths as fighters, reportedly offering payments to their parents.

The issue recently came under scrutiny after a militant video emerged of a 16-year-old youth beheading a soldier in lawless South Waziristan and images of preteens brandishing weapons. But it is not confined to religious extremist groups and has been fermenting for decades in remote areas where tribes wage war over grudges new and old.

...

Part of the problem is the drastic shortage of quality education, several experts said. The gap is being filled by religious schools known as madrassas that often focus only on Islamic teachings with no modern subjects and TV-watching banned as a sin. Funded by charities or rich donors, some madrassas have been acccused of promoting extremism. Many students live there because their parents can't afford to raise them.

A video available in some markets shows young boys chanting Islamic slogans at a madrassa as they tote rifles that are nearly bigger than they are and engage in martials arts training.

Exit question: Is it islamophobic to assume terrorism has anything to do with islam? Or is islamphobia itself terrorism?

I'm thinkin'... Aren't the West funding some of those madrassas?

So many questions and so little time!

Bonus links:
Islamophobiaphobia
Most peaceful country gives cash to terrorists.

Crossposted

It's Un-Islamic Thus You Have To Die

Even if you're a Christian:

On her first day at Basra University this year a man came up to Zeena, a 21-year-old Christian woman, and three other Christian girls and ordered them to cover their heads with a hijab, or Islamic headscarf.

“We didn't listen to him, and thought he might just be some extremist student representing only himself,” she said. The next day Zeena and two of her friends returned to class with uncovered heads.

This time a man in the black clothes of the Shia militia stopped them at the entrance and took them aside. “He said, 'We asked you yesterday to wear a hijab, so why are you and your friends not covering your hair?'. He was talking very aggressively and I was scared,” Zeena recalled.

The girls explained that they were Christians and that their faith did not call for headscarves. “He said: 'Outside this university you are Christian and can do what you want; inside you are not. Next time I want to see you wearing a hijab or I swear to God the three of you will be killed immediately',” Zeena recalled. Terrified, the girls ran home. They now wear the headscarf all the time.

These Religion of Peace worshippers aren't kidding:

Women in Iraq's southern city of Basra are living in fear. More than 40 have been killed and their bodies dumped in the streets in the past five months for behaviour deemed un-Islamic, the city's police chief says.

A warning scrawled in red on a wall threatens any woman who wears makeup or appears in public without an Islamic headscarf with dire punishment.

"Whoever disobeys will be punished. God is our witness that we have conveyed this message," it says.

Exit question: What are the odds the use of the burqa leads to sexual frustration? Hint: Sex Obsession And The Burqa

Crossposted

BBC Funded Islamic Terrorist's Paintballing

October 10th the BBC reported:

Five men have gone on trial accused of their part in a plot to create terrorist training camps in the UK.

Alleged terrorist training took the form of camping trips and paintballing excursions around Britain, said David Farrell, prosecuting.

Mr Farrell added that the trips were intended to "foster within the participants that they were training for 'Jihad' against the 'Kuffir', or non-believers".

And the journalists over at BBC already knew they'd paid for the whole party.

Trust them if you dare.

BBC 'took terrorist trainers paintballing':

The BBC funded a paintballing trip for men later accused of Islamic terrorism and failed to pass on information about the 21/7 bombers to police, a court was told yesterday.

Mohammed Hamid, who is charged with overseeing a two-year radicalisation programme to prepare London-based Muslim youths for jihad, was described as a “cockney comic” by a BBC producer.

The BBC paid for Mr Hamid and fellow defendants Muhammad al-Figari and Mousa Brown to go on a paintballing trip at the Delta Force centre in Tonbridge, Kent, in February 2005. The men, accused of terrorism training, were filmed for a BBC programme called Don’t Panic, I’m Islamic, screened in June 2005.

The BBC paid Mr Hamid, an Islamic preacher who denies recruiting and grooming the men behind the failed July 2005 attack, a £300 fee to take part in the programme, Woolwich Crown Court was told.

It was alleged that Mr Hamid told a BBC reporter that he would use the corporation’s money to pay a fine imposed by magistrates for a public order offence.

Program researcher Nasreen Suleaman "felt no obligation" to report about the bombers to the police:

Nasreen Suleaman, a researcher on the programme, told the court that Mr Hamid, 50, contacted her after the July 2005 attack and told her of his association with the bombers. But she said that she felt no obligation to contact the police with this information. Ms Suleaman said that she informed senior BBC managers but was not told to contact the police.

Hey, after all, she got a "sense":

“I got the sense that he was already talking to the police. I referred it to my immediate boss at the BBC. I wasn’t told that there was an obligation. In fact it was referred above her as well. It was such a big story.” She added: “I don’t think it’s my obligation to tell another adult that he should go to the police.”

Maybe not. But it is your, and the BBC's, damned obligation to hand over information regarding mass-murdering terrorists to the authorities.

You know, as protection for you fellow citizens.

You can watch the video "Don't Panic, I'm Islamic" here.

Cross-posted

Folk Wisdom

I love holidays. Especially holidays devoted to sex.

Pilgrims celebrating the Hindu month of Shravan (mid-July to mid-August) are filling the pockets of marijuana sellers in the Deoghar district of Jharkand, according to a report in the News Post of India. Considered auspicious by followers of Lord Shiva, the month is marked by, among other things, a pilgrimage by millions of adherents to pour water on the Shiva Linga at the Baidyanath temple in Deoghar.

The pilgrims, clad in saffron, smoke marijuana (ganja) as part of the observance. According to one estimate cited by the News and Post, devotees are buying and smoking 50 to 65 pounds of marijuana a day from happy Deoghhar pot vendors.

I think the Shiva Linga deserves some explanation. It is the male sex organ.

Now why would pot and the male sex organ be combined in celebration? I think it is folk wisdom. I wrote an article a while back, Better than Viagra, about the helpful properties of marijuana when it comes to sex.

It is possible the Hindus are on to something. It is possible they have been on to it for a very long time. It is my estimation that when the boomers figure this out in a big way the drug war will be over. It is hard to stand between a man and sex. Heck the ladies would be quite supportive as well.

Cross Posted at Power and Control and at Classical Values

Reliapundit adds: Sheesh MS, maybe it's time you moved to India; you could even become a Hindu!

BTW: what exactly does this have to do with combating leftism?

OH..., do ya think the "drug war" is a leftist thing!? Or just too statist?

I put this issue way below immigration and abortion and pollution and taxes. AND WAY WAY BELOW WW4.

But thanks for your views. THEY'RE ALWAYS ENTERTAINING!

(Or is it merely this.)

HITCHENS: WRONG ABOUT GOD AND SOCIALISM

INSTAPUNDIT links to a video at SLATE of the HITCHENS-SHARPTON DEBATE.

This is the debate in which Sharpton - the convicted slanderer and Democrat candidate for the 2004 presidential nomination, and friend of fellow racist and race-baiting fraudster Tawana Brawley, and the nanny-state's hero Mike Bloomberg - made bigoted remarks about Romney and Mormons.

Hitch has debated scum like this before - he debated George Galloway a last year.

This debate was about religion and God: Hitch is an avowed atheist and Sharpton a preacher. Lincoln-Douglas it is not.

Watch the debate if you want. Hitch is ALWAYS entertaining and brilliant. In this case he is also WRONG.

Remember, Hitch is also an AVOWED SOCIALIST.

You know what SOCIALISM IS, DON'T YOU!?

Hitch doesn't. He is blind to it's horrors.

In fact, socialism killed more people in the last century than religion did in the previous 30 centuries. Stalin, Mao, Hitler, Pol Pot, Castro, Saddam, Assad, DELIBERATELY MURDERED HUNDREDS OF MILLIONS OF PEOPLE. And their economic policies killed millions more.

By comparison, religion killed nobody. Except for wars between Muslims and other Muslims, and between non-Muslims and Muslims. [Tribalism and nationalism killed many millions, too - on all continents.]

And religion has also given us the greatest book of all time - The Bible (so sorry Hitch': it ain't Das Kapital!), and also gave us Bach - and so much more GREAT MUSIC, and also gave us the Sistine Chapel, and the Salisbury Cathedral - and so many more GREAT PAINTINGS & BUILDINGS, and religion gave us Pope JPII - (who was the catalyst who liberated eastern Europe and helped bring down the USSR from... er um SOCIALISM), and religion gave us Buddhism, and Hinduism, to - and ... well, you get the idea.

What did socialism give us" HERE, (partial list): genocide on an unprecedented scale and ugly architecture. Gulags, soup lines, a literal and figurative state of fear.

And when the walls came down in eastern Europe, the people went to church again.

As they say, nobody is getting into boats and risking their lives trying to GET INTO CUBA. Likewise, whenever and wherever atheistic totalitarianism is vanquished, nobody lines up to get into the "atheists club" -- they wouldn't even if there was such a ridiculous thing.

And it's no accident that from the time of the Maccabees, up through to the time of our Founding Fathers, up through to the time of Solidarity, the fire which burns so deep so bright within each of us has been nurtured and informed by faith in the Eternal, in the transcendent, in the "meta-human" - by faith in God-given rights. And God.

Without God-centered transcendent values humanity does what is right in its own eyes. And this relativism always devolves into the amoral and then the immoral.

Sure, we fall short very often; history is replete with our all too HUMAN short-comings. We may never be able to perfectly see and know or do what the Lord wants us to do, or live the way the Lord wants us to live. It is an eternal striving - worth striving for; as Lincoln said:

With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in...

All of Lincoln's greatest speeches are imbued with religiosity and faith in the Eternal. This faith - a millenniums old faith in the Eternal, and NOT the faith in a failed and entirely discredited ideology of the last century - is what shall finally set us ALL free. Not faith in Marx.

Like the old Negro spiritual gospel says - (most famously quoted by that wonderful PREACHER and GREAT HUMAN LIBERATOR DR. MARTIN LUTHER KING JR.):

FREE AT LAST, FREE AT LAST, THANK GOD ALMIGHTY I AM FREE AT LAST.

It's no accident that Great Liberators as disparate as Lincoln, King and Lech Walesa were all men of faith.

Nor that Stalin and Mao and Pol Pot and the others were atheists, materialists and tyrants.

These tyrants were not smarter men than the great liberators. They were wrong. And evil.

The tyranny of man-over-men is always evil, and always ULTIMATELY an affront to the Eternal; the "Divine rule of kings" was always a dirty, self-serving demagogic lie.

There is but one Lord above us all; He endowed us each with inalienable rights, and no king, no state, no materialist ideology has any sound moral basis to abridge these rights without sufficient and testable legal cause and due process. This is at the very core of our democracy. Without it, we embark down a slippery slope, one which has usually landed humanity in chaos, degradation, enslavement, and wanton destructiveness.

Atheism denies that there is any such thing as an extra-human, non-material, Eternal and transcendent value and force. We are merely somewhat rational animals to atheists like Hitchens. If we would but behave RATIONALLY and dispassionately all our social relations would be fine. The soul is an illusion to them. God a lie.

I've seen the world THEY make. The social utopianists. It is hell.

I choose God.

UPDATE: A good ironic music-video proves the point as well...

UPDATE #2: another good music video exposing the commie atheists. Via KisP.

Giving Up Religious Supremacism

Winds of Change is discussing a post by Ali Eteraz. His thesis is that we need to give up partisanship. That no political philosophy is better than another. Split the differences.

Ali says:

I cannot in clean conscience engage against religious supremacism and exclusion if I engage in ideological supremacism and exclusion.

Sure you can.

For the most part it is impossible to tell whether belief in God A or God B or God Ba has more merit.

However, one can measure the results of one ideology over another. Capitalism vs. Communism for instance. Or Self Government vs. Despotism.

Modern man has advanced through differentiation. You know reason. Occam's Razor and all that. We have rules for judging differences. In size. In weight. Even in opinion.

I'd hate to give all that up just so you can feel good about giving up religious supremacism.

Cross Posted at Power and Control and at Classical Values