There are no recorded cases of anyone putting poison or razor blades into Halloween goodies and handing them out to children at large (I believe there’s been one or two where they were given to specific children).
2)Neither bonfires nor Wicca are Satanic. Unless you assume everything non-Christian is Satanic, but even then pagans and witches are no worse than say, Festivus or Ramadan.
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Archive for the 'Religion' Category
Two points about Mary Ready’s Saturday column
November 2nd, 2009, 2:52 pm by fshermanDaily News letters again
October 30th, 2009, 2:12 pm by fshermanFirst we have Sam Patti, die-hard Republican asserting that “52 of the 55 signers of the Declaration of Independence were orthodox … Bible carrying Christians. The three others all believed in the Bible as the Divine Truth.”
I’m inclined to suspect he’s full of it since Thomas Jefferson signed the Declaration and he spent a lot of effort editing the Bible (out with miracles and other stuff he felt religion had added to the truth) to create one of his own. So he was hardly orthodox, and hardly accepted the Bible as “divine truth” in the way it’s usually meant today.
Even if so—so what? The Founders of this country wrote a secular Constitution that didn’t mention God except to say there would be no religious tests for office (something seen as scandalously anti-Christian at the time). They may all have been Christians (although much of what I read seems otherwise) but they didn’t create a Christian nation as anyone at the time (or today) would think of it.
Then Patti asserts that “since the 1960s, God has not been welcome in America.” So God was more welcome back in the days of Jim Crow segregation? Back when it was legal to hire and fire based on religion and gender and gays were banned from federal service?
I think Patti’s God and mine have different perspectives.
Then we have Eileen Zunich of Miramar Beach who asserts that Obama’s stance on Fox News is “beyond what any previous administration has done” regarding “controlling all news coverage.”
Yes, criticizing Fox and not giving them interviews is sooo much greater control than say, Bush administration’s record:
•Paying columnists to write favorable pieces
•Ignoring Helen Thomas, a veteran white house reporter, when she kept asking unwanted questions
•The Pentagon’s program for providing the media with military “experts” who had agreed to support the administration’s war plans, while discouraging the use of talking heads who didn’t.
•Staged mock press conferences with FEMA employees pretending to be reporters.
Then, today, we have a letter from Rodger Woltjer of Niceville who’s very upset that because of animal rights groups the circus is no longer “a celebrated event shared by young and old alike” and that by protesting animal cruely they have joined “the ranks of the Anti-Christ crowd.” Because Jesus really loved animal cruelty?
Some people like sex
October 22nd, 2009, 2:27 pm by fshermanFrom an op-ed by conservative Catholic Bill Donohue published in the Washington Post:
“Sexual libertines, from the Marquis de Sade to radical gay activists, have sought to pervert society by acting out on their own perversions. What motivates them most of all is a pathological hatred of Christianity.”
Umm, I’ve actually known a few libertines and most of them are motivated by liking sex. Any hatred of Christianity, if it exists, is more in response to the efforts of right-wingers such as Donohue to stick their nose into other people’s sex lives.
Donohue’s column was too insubstantial to bother with further (and pretty much the standard whining about how evil secular liberals are out to destroy religion), but I thought I’d take at least one shot.
NOW Congress thinks lobbying is bad
October 16th, 2009, 3:28 pm by fshermanOK, not all lobbying, and not all of Congress, just a handful of congressmen and women who are horrified that the Council on American-Islamic Relations has plans to lobby Congress and try to get its people on board as Congressional interns.
When big business does it, it’s fine; when Muslims do it, it hands over America to al-Qaida!
Glenn Greenwald has the story.
Miscellanea from the Daily News letter pages
October 5th, 2009, 3:09 pm by fsherman•Randy Henning, Mossy Head, on the Santa Rosa County school prayer controversy: “The Bill of Rights is a restriction on the federal government, not local or state.”
The Supreme Court has ruled that both the First and Fourth amendments are binding on the states (others too, I believe). And this is a good thing, because without the First Amendment, schools really could shut out prayer if they wanted to: No students allowed to say grace, or hold Bible study groups on school property, etc
•Allan Stearns, FWB: “I seriously doubt race is playing a part among those disappointed with the current administration … Race is not the issue. Can’t we agree to disagree without having to resort to the race card?”
Certainly not everyone who’s displeased with Obama is upset about race, but yes, race is definitely an issue: Just look at the racial imagery during the campaign, (Obama Waffles!), Limbaugh’s statement that liberals should find racism as acceptable as homosexuality or the whole birther mess. Sure, they’d have found some crazy rationale why Obama wasn’t a REAL president, just as they did with Clinton and Gore*, but if he’d been as white as McCain, I can’t see “Maybe he’s not a natural-born American!” being the issue.
*Remember when the letters page was always telling us that Clinton wasn’t elected with a majority of all American voters? Or pundits who’d explain that geographically, Bush won a much larger region of the country than Gore, or he won the votes of Real Americans instead of those evil liberals in the big cities (whose votes, the subtext seemed to be, shouldn’t have counted).
•Joe Les Fishback, of Crestview: “The number liberals keep tossing out there, 48 million without healthcare is ridiculous … 20 million people choose big-screen TVs, cell-phones, expensive cars, etc., instead of health care.”
I know this is a standard Republican theme—everyone who wants a government service is a lazy bum—but as I’ve noted in previous posts, a lot of people can’t afford health care and don’t have any of these things either. And trust me, going without cell-phone service isn’t going to bring in enough money to cover your premiums.
•Fishback again: “Racism is a two way street. There is just as much black acism as there is white racism. Liberals just choose to ignore it.”
Ooooh, poor discriminated-against Mr. Fishback. Let’s compare, shall we? White racism against blacks had led to slavery (OK, slavery was as much a cause of racism as a result, but I’m putting it in here), Jim Crow segregation, lynchings, the murder of Civil Rights workers, sundown towns and black people trying to walk out of New Orleans before Katrina getting turned back at gunpoint.
Racism of blacks against whites has generated what horrible consequences exactly?
•Harold Medlin, FWB, on the prayer issue: “If Christians and all God-loving people dont’ draw a line in the sand somewhere, the morals of our country will worsen.”
Yes, because prayer in schools was such a wonderful deterrent to Jim Crow, to treating rape victims like prostitutes, to the beatings and persecutions of gays … Such fine moral times.
I also wonder how many of these pro-prayer people would be screaming if the prayers were, say, to Allah, or to the Blessed Virgin.
Defending the rights of vile people
September 30th, 2009, 4:28 pm by fshermanA U.S. Appeals Court has ruled in favor of Westboro Baptist Church—the people who express the love of God by picketing funerals of gays and soldiers—in a lawsuit, as detailed here. The court ruled that however repellent the views of Westboro and its leader, Fred Phelps, it was still covered by the First Amendment.
I’m in favor of this, overall, though I’m surprised at the Court’s decision a piece one of the protesters posted online claiming that the soldier’s parents taught him “to defy his creator,” “raised him from the devil” and “taught him that God was a liar.” This would seem to fall into the slander category—the court’s argument it was just a hysterical hate-filled rant that couldn’t be taken as a serious statement of fact is one I’d disagree with (hysterical yes, but from these people I see no reason to think it’s an exaggeration of their views).
Still, better to err on the side of more speech than less. Even when the speakers are scum.
National Review sides with the Communist oppressors
July 6th, 2009, 1:25 pm by fshermanFrom Andy McCarthy on the National Review website:
“The Wall Street Journal (as flagged in the NRO web briefing) reports on rioting in China by Uighur “students” that has left scores dead and hundreds wounded. The “students,” described elsewhere in the story as from a “predominantly Muslim ethnic group[, which has] long chafed at restrictions on their civil liberties and religious practices imposed by a Chinese government fearful of political dissent,” expressed their dissent by torching cars and buses, as well as — according to accounts of some witnesses to state-controlled media — rampaging “with big knives stabbing people” on the street.
No reason for non-Muslims in Bermuda, Palau, or the United States to worry, though. The lovable Uighurs are merely trying to address “economic and social discrimination.” Once they get social justice, I’m sure they’ll stop.”
The Uighurs have been actively persecuted by the Chinese government. The protests were, in part, a response to the deaths of two Uighurs (possibly more) last month at the hands of a Chinese mob. Accounts of the rioting and Uighur brutality come through the Chinese state news service.
Swallowing China’s portrayal of the Uighurs is like swallowing a press release from Pravda back in the USSR’s heyday. Whether it’s because of the bias of so many right wingers against Islam or just that the Bush administration chose to lock them up (and the right wing is firmly committed to the principle that everyone the Bush administration locked up was an enemy of America), at least some Communist propaganda is now acceptable, it seems.
June 22nd, 2009, 2:54 pm by fsherman
Abortion opponents are reporting death threats against them in the wake of the Tiller assassination.
Even allowing for the fact some of the threats aren’t what I’d count as threats (”I hope someone kills you all.”), death threats aren’t an acceptable tactic. The fact that right-to-lifers don’t seem to be bothered by similar verbal tactics on their side (much as they may complain about people who decide to act on them) is no excuse.
That being said, I take issue with this statement by Rev. Patrick Mahoney, director of the Washington, D.C.-based Christian Defense Coalition: “I don’t want to go into detail, but I know for a fact that numerous pro-life leaders travel with bulletproof vests.”
As the blogger Digby points out, there has never been a reported assassination attempt on an anti-abortion activist. Threats on abortion doctors have been backed up by bullets, bombs and actions.
So as far as I can see, the only martyrs are on the pro-choice side.
Miscellanea
June 9th, 2009, 12:10 pm by fsherman•The Graham-Lieberman amendment to the supplemental war-spending bill didn’t make it into the final bill. The amendment would have given the president the power to cover up the torture photos that a court has demanded the government produce.
As Glenn Greenwald points out, the rationale for covering up the photos—they will inflame hostility against us—amounts to saying that the more horrible our actions, the more we’re entitled to keep them secret.
•The Supreme Court has decided not to tackle the military Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell policy, but Congress is working on a bill to change the rules.
•The Supreme Court has ruled that a judge should have recused himself from a case in which the defendant had previously spent $3 million on a campaign against the incumbent whose seat the judge then took.
•A really terrific article in Christian Science Monitor about a female Pakistani playwright using theater to challenge the country’s religious right.
Poor, persecuted Christians
June 8th, 2009, 10:34 am by fshermanThe American Library Association reports on the case of a Christian group that a)is suing for the right to burn a Wisconsin library’s copy of a book it objects to (Baby Be-Bop by Francesca Lia Block) and b)$120,000 for being “exposed” to the book at a library display.
Newsflash: Books are not kryptonite. Being exposed to it sitting on a shelf is not harmful.
