Army Base Forcing Soldiers to Attend Church

Army Base Cannot Coerce Soldier Trainees To Attend Church Services, Says Americans United

From an article posted on Americans United for Separation of Church and State website July 23, 2008

Watchdog Group Asks U.S. Department of Defense to Investigate Missouri Army Base That Promotes Baptist Church Proselytism

Americans United for Separation of Church and State today asked the U.S. Department of Defense to investigate an Army base’s practice of coercing soldiers to attend church services during their training.

Fort Leonard Wood in Missouri offers “Free Day Away” as one of only two opportunities for soldiers to leave the base during eight weeks of vigorous Army training. (The other day is the day before graduation, which can be spent with parents and guests.) During “Free Day Away,” trainees are picked up by a bus sent from the Tabernacle Baptist Church of Lebanon, Mo., to participate in a day full of recreational activities, followed by dinner and a required church service.

Trainees are given the impression that the event is sponsored by the Army and that they must attend. If they do not attend, they have to remain on the base and continue with training, while those who attend the event have a break for the day.

“We believe that it is of utmost importance that the Army guarantee the constitutional rights of those who risk their lives to protect our freedom,” said the Rev. Barry W. Lynn, Americans United executive director. “And that means ensuring that soldiers have the freedom to practice any faith or no faith at all.

“The coercive religious practices at Fort Leonard Wood are an outrage,” he continued, “and the Department of Defense should put a stop to them immediately.”

During the church service, soldiers are told that they are all sinners who must repent and that they “must be saved now or go to hell.” Soldiers willing to accept Jesus Christ as their personal savior are instructed to step into the aisles of the church and enroll in a six-lesson correspondence course that will lead to their “personal salvation.”

In a 2003 article in the Global Baptist Times, the pastor of Tabernacle Church reported that 270,000 soldiers had participated in the “Free Day Away” ministry since its inception in 1971 and that 47,000 had accepted Jesus Christ as their savior. The Tabernacle Church also asks the soldiers to provide their home addresses so members of their families can also be “saved.”

Fort Leonard Wood has promoted this program for the past 36 years and the program is endorsed by the base commander, Americans United learned during its investigation.

Americans United, in its letter, urged Gordon S. Heddell, acting inspector general for the Department of Defense, to conduct a full investigation into the Army’s “Free Day Away” practice.

The letter was prepared by Americans United Senior Litigation Counsel Alex J. Luchenitser and volunteer attorney Howard Sribnick.

Bill Moyers Would Like Bill O-Reilly On His Show to Answer a Few Questions

Marcus Brigstocke on Religion

Was the Flight 93 Memorial More a Tribute to Islam Than the Victims?

Earlier I dismissed Michelle Malkin as a lunatic for insisting the people who wear scarves around their necks are supporting Islamic terrorists. I haven't changed my mind on that, of course, but I have found something on which I agree with Malkin. (Trust me.... I was as shocked as anyone).

A competition for a design memorializing the victims of Flight 93 began Sept. 11, 2004, and out of more than 1,000 entries, the design below, called the "Crescent of Embrace, was chosen:

Now, I'm not Islamaphobic, but I don't think a crescent of trees, facing Mecca, which will turn red in the fall (which includes the month of September) with the site of the crash being in the same position of the star on the symbol of Islam is the appropriate manner in which to memorialize victims of an Islamic terrorist attack.

This would be a lovely memorial to all those innocent American-Muslims who suffered violent attacks from ignorant Islamaphobes after 9/11, as well to all those who were torn from their families and deported by the Bush Administration in the now infamous "registration" process. But it's not an appropriate memorial to those who died in the crash of Flight 93.

You really have to question the motives behind the couple that designed this memorial, Paul and Milena Murdoch of Los Angeles, who assert that the shape is a mere coincidence and was not intended to resemble the symbol for Islam. I find it really hard to believe they never saw the connection.

To their credit, however, they have agreed to modify the design. It will now be a full circle, rather than a crescent.

Patriot Act - The War on Civil Liberties

I highly recommend the documentary, Unconstitutional.

Government "For" the People? - What Bush and Cheney Think About American Public

The Bush Administration's Lies About Iraq - Hear Them for Yourself

Goddess Save Us From Rachael Ray's Terrorist Scarf!

Who knew? All this time Rachael Ray has been spending on her TV show and writing books has all just been a cover for her real job as an Al Qaeda operative. It's all become painfully clear to us now.

You can't make this stuff up. First, blogger Pam Geller posted it under the headline "Rachel [sic] Ray: Dunkin Donuts Jihad Tool." Then, ultra-conservative Fixed News commentator Michelle Malkin got hysterical over it.

What is "it?" A scarf. No lie. A black and white printed scarf wrapped around Rachael Ray's neck in a Dunkin Donuts ad. Yes... really.

Geller and Malkin insist the scarf looks too much like a keffiyeh, a traditional headdress worn by Arab men. She goes even further by claiming that the fashion designers and hollywood stylists are supporting jihad by dressing their clients in these scarves. On her website she states, "The keffiyeh, for the clueless, is the traditional scarf of Arab men that has come to symbolize murderous Palestinian jihad. Popularized by Yasser Arafat and a regular adornment of Muslim terrorists appearing in beheading and hostage-taking videos, the apparel has been mainstreamed by both ignorant (and not so ignorant) fashion designers, celebrities and left-wing icons.... Fashion statements may seem insignificant, but when they lead to the mainstreaming of violence -- unintentionally or not -- they matter. Ignorance is no longer an excuse. In post-9/11 America, vigilance must never go out of style."

Is she serious?!?! I think the must-have fashion accessory for Ms. Geller and Ms. Malkin this season is a straight jacket.

But here's the sad part.... caving to the pressure of a few lunatic conservative bloggers, Dunkin Donuts actually pulled the ad. In an poll on the website of NBC's affiliate station in Chicago, they ask readers, " Do you think Dunkin Donuts should have pulled the Rachel Ray ad?" As of 9:10 PST May 30, 2008, an overwhelming 84% had responded "no." It's comforting to know that only 16% of our population has lost all common sense.

CAIR: Obama Not a Muslim Apostate

Earlier I posted an article written by Edward Luttwak where he asserts that the Muslim community would react violently if Obama was elected president. His reasoning was that, though not a Muslim now, his father was a Muslim and that would make him born a Muslim who rejected the faith and this would make him an apostate.

Well, today I found an interesting post on CAIR's site titled, "Luttwak Does Not Speak for a Billion Muslims." CAIR stands for Council on American-Islamic Relations, and they strongly disagree with Luttwak. Some would characterize CAIR as "extremist," therefore taking away the argument that their defense of Obama comes from a moderate position. Whether this is true or not, I don't know. Nevertheless, their statement on this matter is very interesting:

Dalia Mogahed and John Esposito recently asked one of the most pertinent questions of our time: Who speaks for a billion Muslims?

I won't tell you the answer because I recommend that you read their book. But I will give this away: the answer is not Edward Luttwak.

Nonetheless, in a recent New York Times commentary, Luttwak pretends to do just that. The product of his curious endeavor is a sobering demonstration of why it is an ill-fated idea.

Luttwak makes the bizarre claim that U.S. presidential hopeful Barack Obama is an apostate according to Islamic law and concludes that, if elected, Muslims will either seek his head or look the other way when it is sought.

If Luttwak's rendition of Obama's biography is a little off, then his understanding of Islamic law is downright inaccurate, and his survey of Muslim beliefs and attitudes grossly simplistic.

Obama is neither a convert nor an apostate for the simple fact that he never declared himself a Muslim to begin with. The fact that his father and grandfather were Muslims does not itself determine his own faith status.

When it comes to Islamic law, Luttwak is confused on two fronts.

First, there is nothing in Islamic law that suggests that Islam is passed down genetically. To the contrary, the state of being Muslim (submission) is enshrined in Islam as a personal covenant between a human being and God; as such it can only be a freewill choice of the heart and mind. For that reason, every convert to Islam is asked publicly at the time of taking the testimony of faith whether they are coerced or are converting of their own free will.

Conversely, converting out of Islam is also a matter of free will. The Qur'an explicitly states: "Let there be no compulsion in matters of faith." [2:256]

Second, Luttwak gets apostasy wrong. According to most Muslim scholars, the term apostate is applied under exceptional circumstances that have more to do with treason and the posing of a national threat than with conversion alone. This was applicable in the context of a new and vulnerable Islamic state where, in historical instances, those who left the fold of Islam ended up joining the warring factions against Muslims.

After befuddling Islam's take on apostasy, Luttwak then swiftly moves to build a ghoulish and speculative scenario of how Muslims en-masse would subsequently use it against Obama.

In doing so, Luttwak employs two intellectually lazy and reductive routines, all too common in today's public discourse on Islam and Muslims.

In the first, aberrational instances are cherry-picked and then laundry listed in an attempt to make definitive statements about the norm.

Luttwak pretends to sample the Muslim world at random to substantiate his claim about Muslim attitudes against apostates. Instead, he selectively focuses on the most religiously stringent periphery of the Muslim world by its own standards: Saudi Arabia, Iran, and the Taliban's Afghanistan. Once there, he drills down further for cases that are exceptional even by those countries' own standards. The result leaves the reader with the false impression that the extreme of the extreme is somehow representative of the norm, when in truth it represents a fraction of 1% of the total.

The second reductive routine casts Muslims into a simplistic monolithic entity.

Luttwak explains that, while most Americans understand that Obama is not a Muslim, "[h]is conversion, however, [is] a crime in Muslim eyes." Similarly, he states that it would be difficult to plan Obama's security during state visits to Muslim countries because "the very act of protecting him would be sinful for Islamic security guards." He goes further to state that "most citizens of the Islamic world would be horrified by the fact of [his] conversion to Christianity once it became widely known."

These are all pretty sweeping statements; worse still, they are highly inaccurate.

Of course, most Muslims have TV sets and follow the news. They are already aware of the fact that, although Obama's father was Muslim, he himself is a Christian. There is no bounty on his head, and talking to people on the streets in Muslim countries explains why: most are not preoccupied with the religious or race affiliation of American presidents. They dislike George Bush because they see him as an arrogant war monger. They liked John Kennedy because they felt he was an empathetic and intelligent leader. Both were white and Christian.

Contrary to Luttwak's final conclusion, Obama is already quite popular in the Muslim world and is likely to be even more so if elected president. But it is not necessarily because he is black or has Muslim ancestry – it is because Obama is widely perceived as the most likely candidate to bring an end to the current war in Iraq and treat the rest of the Muslim world with some respect.

McCain Pastor Says U.S. Founded to Destroy Islam

One of the fundamentalist Christian pastors endorcing McCain, Rod Parsley, would like us to believe the U.S. was founded for the purpose of destroying Islam. I'd like to see his sources. As far as sources to the contrary, in Andrew Sullivan's book The Conservative Soul:

In 1797, the U.S. Senate unanimously approved the "Treaty of Tripoli," an attempt to deal with Muslim piracy and terrorism in the Mediterranean. One of its clauses read:

"As the Government of the United States of America is not, in any sense, founded on the Christian religion; as it has in itself no character of enmity against the laws, religion, or tranquility, of Mussulmen; and, as the said States never entered into any war, or act of hostility against any Mahometan nation, it is declared by the parties, that no pretext arising from religious opinions, shall ever produce an interruption of the harmony existing between the two countries."

It is hard to think of a leading contemporary Republican insisting that American government "is not, in any sense, founded on the Christian religion." In the early republic, not a single senator dissented.

Parsley and I agree on one thing: Islam is a definite threat to the West. Despite what Islamic apologists would like us to believe, the Quran implicitly instructs it's followers to kill all heretics that refuse to be converted. They are, indeed, waging holy war against non-muslims.

But, I also believe the U.S. is just as guilty of waging it's own holy war. We've allowed ourselves to be governed by a bunch of crazed literalists who are no better than playground bullies with their "My God is better than your God" mentality. Christians, Jews, Muslims, Hindus.... none of them are any better than the inner city gangs that just keep retaliating against each other in an endless cycle of violence.

Under the Bush administration, the U.S. has been made to look like nothing more than a nation of arrogant hypocrites in the eyes of the rest of the world. In the book I'm currently reading, Why the Christian Right is Wrong, Christian minister Robin Meyers illustrates this beautifully:

"When you claim that our God is bigger than their God and that our killing is righteous while theirs is evil, we have begun to resemble the enemy we claim to be fighting, and that is immoral. We have met the enemy, and the enemy is us.

...When lumping the Iraqi insurgents together with the terrorists of 9/11, the president said that they are all 'enemies of civilization' and share 'a fanatical political ideology.'

That certainly describes the hijackers, but it does not describe every Iraqi nationalist who wants to expel an occupying army from his own country. They have met the enemy, and the enemy is us.

... the president and his Christian Right defenders simply ignored the double standard of calling all 'enemy' resistance an 'insurgency' while calling our eighteenth-century resistance to British occupation...'patriotic'.... Just as there are no Israeli 'terrorists,' there are also no American 'insurgents.' Our resistance, regardless of tactics, is always an act of bravery. The resistance of those we occupy is always an act of barbarism.... There is no force in nature quite so powerful as the response of human beings to occupation by a foreign power.

...By (Bush's) rationale, any invasion we deemed necessary to spread freedom and democracy would have God's blessing. No wonder the rest of the world sees this as a religious crusade.... We have mixed arrogance with absolutism, and the result is that we are conducting our own 'jihad' ...and fueling the very hatred we claim to be fighting.

...This 'my God is bigger than you God' mentality is not just a product of human nature. It's a product of bad theology. The only way in which God will cease being co-opted for the purpose of violence is when we change our way of thinking about God. As long as we are trapped in biblical literalism, the theology of the Fall, and God's invasion from the sky to rescue some while letting others perish, violence in the name of God will never cease....

...Until we shed the 'shedding of blood' as the central metaphor of Christianity, the shedding of blood will continue....

Now we stand at a crossroads in human history. The violence we think will save us cannot, and the evidence of the failure to be 'protected' by either a righteous president or a partisan God is omnipresent.... the name of the Prince of Peace is once more carrying soldiers into battle, this time to slay the dragon called terrorism. The result is the 'downward spiral' that Martin Luther King Jr. described as inevitable. Fighting terrorism with divinely sanctioned violence is like hitting quicksilver with a ball-peen hammer."

Robin Meyers, PhD, is senior minister of Mayflower Congregational Church (United Church of Christ) in Oklahoma City. He is a columnist for The Christian Century and a professor of rhetoric at Oklahoma City University.

Pagan or Atheist for President?

Robert Paul Reyes wrote a great article called In Wicca We Trust! Is America Ready For A Pagan Or Atheist President? which I found posted on News Blaze. It would appear he's a tad anti-Clinton. I, personally, thought Bill Clinton was a pretty good president, particularly in contrast to Dubbya Bush, but Reyes makes some very good points nonetheless.

Polls indicate that the vast majority of Americans wouldn't vote for a presidential candidate who's an atheist or a member of a fringe religion, like a Pagan or Wiccan.

"Many current pagans in industrial societies base their beliefs and practices on a connection to Nature, and a divinity within all living things." Quotation from Wikipedia

What is so threatening about this peaceful ideology that would disqualify an individual from being the President of the United States?

Pagans perceive a touch of divinity within all living things, and atheists see all human beings as equal under the law. Pagans and atheists/freethinkers aren't burdened with the sinner/saint dichotomy. We don't obsess on the differences that divide us; we focus on the similarities that unite us.

But Americans have no problem casting a ballot for a mainstream Christian who doesn't follow the precepts of his faith. Bill Clinton is a Southern Baptist who curses like a sailor, lies like a dog, mates like a bunny, and bears false witness like a jailhouse snitch, but he would still be president if the Constitution didn't have that pesky two-term limit.

Americans need a president who believes in God, because patriotism and religion are so inextricably linked. Most Americans simply can't believe that an atheist can be patriotic; they'd rather elect a hypocritical Christian than a morally-upright unbeliever.

I long for the day when a candidate's religion is as irrelevant as which football team he roots for. But I'm afraid that we'll see a stripper elected president, before an atheist or a Pagan.

Keith Olbermann Has Some Choice Words for Bush

Keith Olbermann was on FIRE tonight! Whoooooh! I think I actually saw smoke coming out of his ears at one point. He had a scathing commentary about Bush on tonight's Countdown that I sincerely hope Bush actually sees for himself.




Olbermann lets Bush have it over recent comments he's made, among which include a truly assasine answer to a question asked of him yesterday, "If we were to pull out of Iraq next year, what's the worst that could happen? What's the doomsday scenario?"

Bush's reply: "Doomsday scenario, of course, is that extremists thoughout the Middle East would be emboldened, which would eventually lead to another attack on the United States. The biggest issue we face is - it's bigger than Iraq - it's the ideological struggle against cold-blooded killers who will kill people to achieve their political objectives."

I was relieved to hear Olbermann's response to that was exactly what I was thinking:

"Mr. Bush, at long last has it not dawned on you that the America you have now created includes 'cold-blooded killers who will kill to achieve their political objectives'? There are those in, or formerly in, your employ who may yet be charged some day with war crimes. Through you haze of self-congratulation and self-pity, do you still have no earthly clue that this nation has laid waste to Iraq to achieve your political objectives? This ideological struggle you speak of, Mr. Bush, is taking place within this country. It is a struggle between Americans who cherish freedom, our and everybody else's."

S. Res. 483: The Ten Commandments is the Basis of Our Law? Yikes!

We had H. Res. 847, then H. Res. 888, now we are threatened with S. Res. 483, which was introduced by Senator Samuel Brownback, (R-Kansas).

Senate Resolution 483 would "recognize the first weekend of May 2008 as 'Ten Commandments Weekend'."

First of all, hasn't the first weekend of May 2008 already passed us by? What, then, would be the purpose of wasting time on this? If I had a nickel for every time I've said this, I'd be wealthier than Donald Trump, but I'll say it again: Don't they have more important issues to deal with? Shouldn't our Senators be focusing on something slightly more relevant to current affairs. Oh I don't know.... maybe the war in Iraq? The threat of a nuclear disaster from several countries including Iran and Pakistan? The economy? Global warming?

Secondly, the Bible and various versions of the Ten Commandments are hardly something to model one's life after. This proposed resolution states, "Whereas the Ten Commandments are a declaration of fundamental principles for a fair and just society...." Really? Fair and just, huh? Let's take a look at the Ten Commandments. I'm going use my copy of the New King James version of the Bible, which here in the U.S. is the most widely accepted version (yes I really do own a Bible... several, actually).

Exodus 20:2 - You shall have no other gods before Me.

How does this commandment make America a better country? What about us Americans who don't worship any god or those who worship a different god(s)? Our government is supposed to be "by the people, for the people" not "for God and only The God of the Old Testament."

This commandment has absolutely nothing to do with morality or what is "fair and just." It is nothing more than pure egotism, which I believe most would agree is not a desirable characteristic in someone who considers themselves "moral."

If this God of the Jews, Christians and Muslims was so great, why is he does he feel so threatened? He sounds ridiculously insecure to me.


Exodus 20:3 - You shall not make for yourself a carved image--any likeness of anything that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth; you shall not bow down to them nor serve the. For I, the Lord your God, am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children to the third and fourth generations of those who hate Me.

Just more egotism. He's a "jealous" God, huh? Again, is that really an admirable characteristic? And it's OK for him to be jealous but not us. We're not supposed to covet anything or anyone, but he can covet us?

And all you Catholics answer this one for me: If we're not supposed to worship "any likeness of anything that is in heaven above," then what are all these statues of the Virgin Mary in churches, on home altars and even dashboards? I myself have witnessed the "faithful" placing flowers at the feet of a statue of Mary, dropping to their knees and bowing their heads. If that's not worship I don't know what the hell is. So are all Catholics, including Senator Brownback, going to burn in hell for their idol worship of Virgin Mary likenesses? You'd be hard pressed to find anyone who believes they are (except possibly McBush's favorite pastor John Hagee, who has called Catholicism "the great whore").

And what is this?:

Hail Mary, full of grace
The Lord is with thee,
blessed art thou among women,
and blessed is the fruit of thy womb, Jesus.
Holy Mary, Mother of God,
pray for us sinners,
now and at the hour of our death.
Amen.

That's not worship? The Catholics say it's veneration not worship. What is the difference? Do they really think this god of theirs is interested in semantics?

In the Merriam-Webster online thesaurus, this is what I found for venerate:

to offer honor or respect to (someone) as a divine power venerate God — see worship 1

Here are some of their synonyms for worship:

adore, deify, glorify, revere, venerate


And it is hardly "fair and just" that this will visit the iniquity of the fathers upon the children to the third and fourth generations of those who hate him? Would we tolerate a law being passed that allowed judges to pass sentences on to the children and grandchildren of those who've committed a crime? So if Joe Schmoe kills his boss and is dies in prison, his son would have to serve out the rest of his sentence? Or how's this: If and when George Bush is finally convicted of war crimes and other offenses committed during his presidency, should we also lock up Jenna and Barbara and all their future offspring as well? Tempting, I know, but hardly "fair and just."


Exodus 20:7 - You shall not take the name of the Lord you God in vain, for the Lord will not hold him guiltless who takes his name in vain.

Again I ask, how is this commandment a fundamental principle for a fair and just society? And am I supposed to believe none of the sponsors of this resolution have ever used the "Lord's" name in vain.


Exodus 20:8 - Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy. Six days you shall labor and do all your work, but the seventh day is the Sabbath of the Lord your God. In it you shall do no work: you, nor your son, nor your daughter, nor your male servant, nor your female servant, nor your cattle (my cattle?), nor your stranger who is within your gates. For in six days the Lord made the heavens and the earth, the sea, and all that is in them, and rested the seventh day. Therefore the Lord blessed the Sabbath day and hallowed it.

OK. Which Sabbath day? For the Jews, it's Saturday. For the Christians, it's Sunday. Hummm..... how did that happen? And by the way, a little bit of trivia, Saturday is named in honor of Saturn or Saturnus, the Roman god of agriculture.... a god worshiped by (gasp!) Pagans long before Christianity was invented. So Saturday was a big holy day long before Moses came along. Sunday is named after the Sun, which was also worshipped by Pagans. And Sunday is named after Sunna, the Germanic goddess of the Sun. But I digress....

So, no working on weekends. Oh yes, America would be a much better place if this commandment were enforced. Think of all the sinners who will be working in your community this Sunday: Doctors and nurses in emergency rooms, paramedics and EMTs, pharmacists, fire fighters, police and highway patrol officers, those people who run our power plants.... tsk tsk. The nerve of those people. They're all going to hell for sure. I wonder if the preachers are sinning by doing their jobs on Sundays? Are rabbis sinning in temples every Saturday? I wonder if Senator Brownback ever works on a Sunday?

Exodus 20:12 - Honor your father and your mother, that your days may be long upon the land which the Lord your God is giving you.

This is certainly reasonable. We should all honor our fathers and mothers. But should it be enforceable by law? Let me remind you what this resolution asserts: "Whereas, in addition to being understood as an elemental source for American law, the Ten Commandments have become a recognized symbol of law in our Nation's culture." So does this mean the next step for Senator Brownback will be to propose a law that allows me to have my children arrested the next time they talk back to me? Again, according to the Bible, the punishment for not honoring your parents is death. Would stoning our children to death for not cleaning their rooms be considered moral? Do we really want to model our laws from the ten commandments?


.... to be continued when I have time to finish this post. Kids, my job, housework... life is getting in the way of my blog posting. Anyone who wants to jump in, feel free to comment.

Will McCain Respect Separation of Church and State?

If his endorsement from Rod Parsley is any indication, the answer is no.

Which Candidate is More Likely to Fuel the Flame of Terrorism?

Edward Luttwak wrote an article recently for the New York Times implying that America will face the wrath of Islam if Obama is elected because he was born a Muslim but rejected the faith. He writes:

"As the son of the Muslim father, Senator Obama was born a Muslim under Muslim law as it is universally understood.... Of course, as most Americans understand it, Senator Obama is not a Muslim. He chose to become a Christian, and indeed has written convincingly to explain how he arrived at his choice and how important his Christian faith is to him.

His conversion, however, was a crime in Muslim eyes; it is “irtidad” or “ridda,” usually translated from the Arabic as “apostasy,” but with connotations of rebellion and treason. Indeed, it is the worst of all crimes that a Muslim can commit, worse than murder."

Well, if anyone out there is thinking the solution to this problem is to elect McCain, think again. Not only has McCain sought out the endorsement of nut-case John Hagee, he has always received the endorsement of another whack-job named Rod Parsley, who has made the outrageous assertion that America was founded for the very purpose of destroying Islam. The video below, produced by Mother Jones and Brave New Films, illustrates this perfectly:



In the video below, Keith Olbermann questions why McCain is embracing hate-mongers:

Why America is in Denial Over Global Warming

Found this great article by Bill McKibben on MotherJones.com titled Climate of Denial.

One morning in Kyoto, we won a round in the battle against global warming. Then special interests and pseudoscience snatched the truth away. What happened?

It was around eight in the morning in the vast convention hall in Kyoto. The negotiations over a worldwide treaty to limit global warming gases, which were supposed to have ended the evening before, had gone on through the night. Drifts of paper—treaty drafts, industry talking points, environmentalist press releases—overflowed every wastebasket. Delegates in suits and ties were passed out on couches, noisily mouth breathing. And polite squadrons of workers were shooing people out of the hall so that some trade show—tool and die makers, I think—could set up its displays.

Finally, from behind the closed doors, word emerged that we had a treaty. The greens all cheered, halfheartedly—since it wasn't as though the agreement would go anywhere near far enough to arrest global warming—but firm in their conviction that the tide on the issue had finally turned. After a decade of resistance, the oil companies and the car companies and all the other deniers of global warming had seen their power matched.

Or so it seemed. I was standing next to a top industry lobbyist, a man who had spent the last week engineering opposition to the treaty, huddling with Exxon lawyers and Saudi delegates, detailing the Venezuelans to change this word, the Kuwaitis to soften that number. Right now he looked just plain tired. "I can't wait to get back to Washington," he said. "In Washington we'll get this under control again."

At the time I thought he was blowing smoke, putting on a game face, whistling past the graveyard of corporate control. I almost felt sorry for him; it seemed to me (as sleep-deprived as everyone else) that we were on the brink of a new world.

As it turned out, we both were right. The rest of the developed world took Kyoto seriously; in the eight years since then, the Europeans and the Japanese have begun to lay the foundation for rapid and genuine progress toward the initial treaty goal of cutting carbon emissions to a level 5 to 10 percent below what it was in 1990. You can see the results of that long Kyoto night in the ranks of windmills rising along the coast of the North Sea, in the solar panels sprouting on German rooftops, and in the remarkable political unanimity in most of the world on the need for rapid change. Tony Blair's science adviser has repeatedly called global warming a greater threat than terrorism, but that hasn't been enough for Britain's Conservatives; the Tory leader (the equivalent of, say, Tom DeLay) rose last summer to excoriate Blair for moving too slowly on carbon reductions.

In Washington, however, the lobbyists did get things "under control." Eight years after Kyoto, Big Oil and Big Coal remain in complete and unchallenged power. Around the country, according to industry analysts, 68 new coal-fired power plants are in various stages of planning. Detroit makes cars that burn more fuel, on average, than at any time in the last two decades. The president doesn't mention the global warming issue, and the leaders of the opposition don't, either: John Kerry didn't exactly run on solving the climate crisis. The high-water mark for legislative action came in 2003, when John McCain actually managed to persuade 43 senators to support a bill calling for at least some carbon reductions, albeit much lower than even the modest Kyoto levels. But given that it takes 60 votes to beat a filibuster and 66 to override a veto, and given that the GOP has since added four hard-right senators to its total, it's safe to say that nothing will be happening inside the Beltway anytime soon.

IT WAS NEVER going to be easy. Controlling global warming is not like the other battles (dirty water, smog) that environmentalists have taken on, and mostly won, over the years. Carbon dioxide, a.k.a. CO2, or just "carbon" for short, is not a conventional pollutant. It's tasteless, colorless, odorless. Unlike carbon monoxide, which is what kills you if you leave your car running in the garage, CO2 doesn't do anything to the human body directly. It does its damage in the lower atmosphere by holding in heat that would otherwise escape out to space. And even more unfortunate, there's no easy way to get rid of it, no catalytic converter you can stick on your tailpipe, no scrubber you can fit to your smokestack. To reduce the amount of CO2 pouring into the atmosphere means dramatically reducing the amount of fossil fuel being consumed. Which means changing the underpinning of the planet's entire economy and altering our most ingrained personal habits. Even under the best scenarios, this will involve something more like a revolution than a technical fix.

You would think the Europeans would have had a harder time making reductions; after all, they were already fairly energy-efficient, thanks to decades of high taxes on coal and oil. Their low-hanging fruit had long since been plucked. For the United States, there were loads of relatively easy fixes. We could have quickly reduced our emissions by trimming the number of SUVs on the road, for instance, while the French were already in Peugeots. However, in certain ways, America was more firmly locked into coal and oil than our European peers: sprawling suburbs, oversized houses, abandoned rail lines. We had the single hardest habit to break, which was thinking of energy as something cheap. This staggering inertia meant that even when our leaders had some interest in controlling energy use, they faced a real challenge. Al Gore wrote a book insisting that the future of civilization itself depended on battling global warming; during his eight years as vice president, Americans increased their carbon emissions by 15 percent.

What makes the battle harder still is the tangibility gap between benefits and costs. Everyone is, in the long run, better off if the planet doesn't burn to a crisp. But in any given year the payoff for shifting away from fossil fuel is incremental and essentially invisible. The costs, however, are concentrated: If you own a coal mine, an oil well, or an assembly line churning out gas-guzzlers, you have a very strong incentive for making sure no one starts charging you for emitting carbon.

At the very least, the "energy sector" needed to stall for time, so that its investments in oil fields and the like could keep on earning for their theoretical lifetimes. The strategy turned out to be simple: Cloud the issue as much as possible so that voters, already none too eager to embrace higher gas prices, would have no real reason to move climate change to the top of their agendas. I mean, if the scientists aren't absolutely certain, well, why not just wait until they get it sorted out?

The tactic worked brilliantly; throughout the 1990s, even as other nations took action, the fossil fuel industry's Global Climate Coalition managed to make American journalists treat the accelerating warming as a he-said-she-said story. True, a vast scientific consensus was forming that climate change threatens the earth more profoundly than anything since the dawn of civilization, but in an Associated Press dispatch the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change didn't look all that much more impressive than, say, Patrick Michaels of the Cato Institute or S. Fred Singer, former chief scientist at the U.S. Department of Transportation. Michaels and Singer weren't really doing new research, just tossing jabs at those who were, but that didn't matter. Their task was not to build a new climate model; it was to provide cover for politicians who were only too happy to duck the issue. Their task was to keep things under control.

It was all incredibly crude. But it was also incredibly effective. For now and for the foreseeable future, the climate skeptics have carried the day. They've understood the shape of American politics far better than environmentalists. They know that it doesn't matter how many scientists are arrayed against you as long as you can intimidate newspapers into giving you equal time. They understand, too, that playing defense is all they need to do: Given the inertia inherent in the economy, it's more than sufficient to simply instill doubt.

IN SHORT, the deniers have done their job, and done it better than the environmen- talists have done theirs. They've delayed action for 15 years now, and their power seems to grow with each year. How, even as the science grew ever firmer and the evidence mounted ever higher, did the climate deniers manage to muddy the issue? It's one of the mightiest political feats of our time, accomplished by a small group of clever and committed people. It's worthwhile trying to understand how they work, not least because some of the same tactics are now being used in debates over other issues, like Social Security. And because the fight over global warming won't end here. Try as they might, even with all three branches of government under their control, conservative Republicans can't repeal the laws of chemistry and physics.

Bill McKibben is a contributing writer to Mother Jones and the author of several books, including his most recent, Wandering Home: A Long Walk Across America's Most Hopeful Landscapes, Vermont's Champlain Valley and New York's Adirondacks.

Got global warming questions? Go to AskQuestions.org

John Hagee, McCain's Pastor, is Far More Dangerous Than Reverend Wright

If you haven't read Matt Tiabbi's article yet about his undercover experience at a retreat hosted by John Hagee, pastor of the Cornerstone Church in Texas, whose fans include George W. Bush and John McCain, then you really should.

John Hagee is a Christian Zionist, which I guess would make Dubbya and McSame Zionists as well? As Tiabbi describes it,

"The whole idea behind Christian Zionism is to align America with the nation of Israel so as to "hurry God up" in his efforts to bring about Armageddon. As Hagee tells it, only after Israel is involved in a final showdown involving a satanic army (in most interpretations, a force of Arabs led by Russians) will Christ reappear. On that happy day, Hagee and his True Believers will be whisked up to Heaven by God, while the rest of us nonbelievers are left behind on Earth to suck eggs and generally suffer various tortures."

During the grand finale of this cult's retreat, which they call "Encounter Weekend," Hagee encourages his flock to vomit up their demons (literally) as he reads them off a list. Among his demons on his list: intellect, philisophy, astrology (oh, yes, please Lord save us from astrology), and hand-writing analysis (somebody warn the FBI they have demons).

So, Hagee cast out Bush's demons of intellect, huh. Well that explains a lot.

Admirably, Hagee also casts out the demon of incest, but he doesn't know his bible very well:

"The next morning the older daughter said to her younger sister, "I slept with our father last night. Let’s get him drunk with wine again tonight, and you go in and sleep with him. That way our family line will be preserved." So that night they got him drunk again, and the younger daughter went in and slept with him. As before, he was unaware of her lying down or getting up again. So both of Lot’s daughters became pregnant by their father." (Genesis 19:23-25, 30-36 , NLT)

Below are just some of the comments received by readers of Tiabbi's investigative report that are worth repeating:

That Hagee supports W and McSame. He's clearly an extremist megalomaniac, yet the MSM won't scrutinize him the same way they've sliced and diced Rev. Wright. Why? I think we know...

"Hagee wants to bring about the end of the world, preferably by convincing President John McCain to pre-emptively use NUCLEAR WEAPONS against Iran. (Just which army taking part in the Great Conflagration is on the side of Satan, again?) And with the end of the world, Right-Wing sadistic "patriots" should know that that means the end of the United States of America as well."

As Voltaire put it, "Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities."

Flags, Not Crosses

Found this from Joel Layton, Director of Atheists of Utah, on the site for The Salt Lake Tribune:

The roadside memorials for troopers who died in service are meant to commemorate their service to the community - to the whole community, not just community members who happen to believe in God. A conservative estimate puts the number of Utahns who declare themselves atheist or agnostic in excess of 225,000. Additionally, there are thousands of taxpaying Utahns who may have a belief system other than that represented by the Christian cross. That is a large portion of the population driving the highways who would like to feel that the Utah Highway Patrol represents them on equal footing with all Utahns.

I would like to place emblems on my car that identify me as atheist. Can I be assured of being treated fairly if pulled over by the UHP when I pass 12-foot-tall Christian crosses emblazoned with the UHP logo?

I find it hard to believe that all citizens, along with the families of these brave troopers, wouldn't be just as proud of memorials based on an American flag rather than a religious symbol.

Joel Layton
Director, Atheists of Utah
Salt Lake City

The Funniest Damn Thing I've Seen in a Long Time

And here's the original by Will Ferrell:

What Happened in Our Names While We Went Shopping

- Written by Leonard Pitts Jr., a columnist for the Miami Herald

Return with me to Abu Ghraib. You remember it. You may not want to, but you do.

The Iraqi prison was the epicenter of an international scandal in 2004 when it was revealed that U.S. soldiers were mistreating detainees, forcing them to stand in stress positions, sexually humiliating them, menacing them with dogs, denying them clothes, dragging them on leashes, threatening them with electrocution.

All of it was captured in photos that shocked the world. One of the most memorable showed then-21-year-old Army private Lynndie England, cigarette poking from an idiotic grin, index fingers cocked like guns as she pointed to the genitals of a naked Iraqi man.

We stared at those images and asked how this could have happened, how American soldiers could have become so degraded and undisciplined, could have wandered so far afield from the moorings of simple, human decency. Many answers were proffered. Mob mentality. Dehumanizing conditions. Lack of oversight.

But as the years have passed, a truer answer has coalesced. Where did these young soldiers get the idea that the rules were suspended, that free reign was given, that they could do whatever they wanted to the men in their custody?

It came from the top.

The latest proof: a recently declassified 2003 memo from John Yoo, then a Justice Department lawyer. The memo, eventually rescinded by Justice, authorized torture as a means of interrogation, a finding that carried the force of law.

Much of the media coverage of the 81-page document has focused on the — and this word is unavoidably ironic — bloodless legalese in which Yoo contemplates the permissibility of putting a prisoner's eyes out, slitting his tongue, scalding him with water, dosing him with mind-altering drugs, disfiguring him with acid.

But what is also appalling is Yoo's contention, repeatedly restated in the memo, that the president in time of war enjoys virtually unfettered authority over, is accountable to no one for, the treatment of prisoners.

Legal scholars have accused Yoo of sloppy reasoning. Eugene Fidell, who teaches military justice at Yale and American universities, told the International Herald Tribune the document was a monument to the "imperial presidency." Yoo disagrees. He calls the memo a "boilerplate" defense of presidential authority.

Your humble correspondent doesn't know from legal scholarship. He does know this: Seven years ago when the nation was attacked and Americans wanted to pitch in, wanted to help, wanted to sacrifice, our leaders told us to go shopping. Prop the economy up, they said. Don't worry about the war. Let us handle it. Go shopping.

And we did. Nor, scared as we were, eager for the illusion of security as we were, did we look too closely or examine too intently the things that were being done in our names.

We became, many of us, expert at ignoring the screams from behind the curtain, discounting the growing mountain of evidence that things were not as we had been told, brushing off nagging questions about what we have become and how that does not square with what we are supposed to be.

We shopped, and did not fret overmuch about the price of our moral laxity.

Maybe that's because the price is paid in tiny increments of our national honor yet somehow, never by those who most deserve to foot the bill. So that, seven years later, George W. Bush is still president of the United States, Donald Rumsfeld is working on his memoirs, John Yoo is a law professor at UC Berkeley.

But Lynndie England is a single mother, on parole and looking for work, living in a trailer with her folks.