Day: December 19, 2006

Jews to Mormons: Stop It with the Posthumous Baptisms Already

Buck Banks

Morbid Mormons: Since the 1990s the Mormon Church has been posthumously baptizing Jews and adding them to its genealogical database in Salt Lake City. But the Latter Dayers went too far when they baptized by proxy legendary — and dead — Nazi hunter Simon Wiesenthal, according to the Jewish Telegraphic Association.

The Simon Wiesenthal Center has called on the Mormon Church to remove its namesake from the church’s on-line database of posthumous baptisms, and to be quick about it.

Proxy baptism is a caring expression of faith that provides deceased persons the opportunity to accept or reject what we believe to be a blessing offered in their behalf.

Rabbi Marvin Hier, dean of the Wiesenthal Center, made the urgent request after being informed by Salt Lake City researcher Helen Radkey that Wiesenthal’s name had been added about a week ago to the Mormons’ International Genealogical Index.

“We are astounded and dismayed that after assurances and promises by the Mormon Church, Mr. Wiesenthal’s life and memory, along with so many other Jews, would be trampled and disregarded,” Hier said.

Wiesenthal “proudly lived as a Jew, died as a Jew, demanded justice for the millions of the victims of the Holocaust and, at his request, was buried in the State of Israel,” he said.

“It is sacrilegious for the Mormon faith to desecrate his memory by suggesting that Jews on their own are not worthy enough to receive God’s eternal blessing.”

Hier also urged the Utah-based Church to remove the names of all other Holocaust victims from the list.

Many Jews, including Holocaust victims, have been found on the index.

Mormon officials promised in 1995 to stop the practice of posthumously baptizing Jews, but did not. They reiterated the pledge in 2000.

Strangely, the Mormon Church is not just baptizing the Jewish victims of the Holocaust, it also has baptized the architect of the Holocaust — Adolf Hitler — as well as Hitler’s parents and his girlfriend Ava Braun. That happened back in 1993, as uncovered by intrepid researcher Helen Radkey. There has always been controversy surrounding the question of whether Hitler was Jewish, due to the fact that his father might have been illegitimate with an unnamed Jewish father, though most sources agree that there is no convincing proof he was Jewish. What authorities do agree on is that Hitler was afraid of discovering that he was a Jew, which was a driving force in his decision to pursue the Final Solution.
[…]

Poll: Bush Popularity Strangely High at 36%

Jon Ponder

It isn’t the War on Christmas, the right to abortion or the threat of gay marriage that is destroying America, it’s the 36 percent of “dead-enders” who still support George W. Bush. What is it with these folks — and what will it take to open their eyes to the truth about the worst leader this country has ever had?

Even some of these same idiots don’t like the way the boy king is running his war of whim, however:

The survey … found support for Bush’s handling of the Iraq conflict has decreased to 28 percent from 34 percent in a poll taken October 13-15.

And a record 70 percent of respondents said they disapproved of Bush’s war management, up from 64 percent in the October poll…

Meanwhile, Bush’s overall job approval was 36 percent — down only 1 percentage point from the previous CNN poll to pose that question December 5-7.

Sixty-two percent said they disapproved of his performance in office, up from 57 percent in the early December poll.

Groups Charge Iraqi Christians Being Persecuted

Buck Banks

Send in the lions: And we thought it was just Sunnis and Shiites who were duking it out in Iraq. It appears a third group — Christians — are bring systematically persecuted and forced to leave the country, according to UPI.

Now I’m no fan of religion in general, but this situation just points to yet another failure of George Bush’s ill-advised, poorly planned invasion of Iraq and its terrible aftermath.

‘They are being bludgeoned by the Islamic extremists. Their priests have been beheaded, churches bombed and there’s a recent report of a crucifixion of a teenage boy.
— Nina Shea

Several groups are calling for improved treatment of Christians in Iraq, who they say are being martyred, persecuted or forced to flee the country to survive.

Among the atrocities are the bombing of more than 15 churches, the kidnapping and murder of 13 Assyrian women in Baghdad in August, and the beheading of a priest in Mosul in October, says Julia Sorisho Rodgers of Christians for Assyrians of Iraq.

“A lot of people in Washington don’t know who the Assyrians are,” said Rodgers, who organized a Dec. 4 rally outside the White House to protest the treatment of Assyrians, who include Christians, Catholics and Orthodox Church members.

In addition to petitions circulating on the Internet, the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF) has urged granting refugee status to these persecuted believers. In November, USCIRF wrote to Paula Dobriansky, under secretary of state for democracy and global affairs, urging her to expand refugee options for the Chaldo-Assyrian and Sabean Mandean communities.

It also asked Dobriansky to urge the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) to resume full refugee status for Iraqi asylum seekers and speedily assess claims.
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Youth Sentenced to 10 Years for Consensual Sex with 15-Year-Old Girl

Jon Ponder
It’s a good thing they didn’t have these laws in Shakespeare’s time, or Romeo and Juliet, who were both underage, would have been in big trouble.

The boy was 17 and the girl was 15. They were videotaped while she was performing oral sex on him, apparently quite willingly. Now he’s two years into a 10 year stretch, with no parole — and his appeal was just denied:

Genarlow Wilson, 20, is serving a prison sentence that shocked his jury, elicited charges of racism from critics of the justice system and that even prosecutors and the State Legislature acknowledge is unjust.

He was sentenced to 10 years in prison without parole for having consensual oral sex with a 15-year-old girl at a New Year’s Eve party, an offense that constituted aggravated child molesting, even though Mr. Wilson himself was only 17.

With Mr. Wilson — a football player, honor student and the first homecoming king at Douglas County High School — nearing two years in prison, the Georgia Supreme Court declined last Friday to hear his appeal.

Mr. Wilson, who is black, is trapped in a legal vise intended to ensure severe penalties for child molesters and other sex offenders, navigating a maze of legal technicalities that for him seems to hold nothing but dead ends. Some critics of the sentence also say Mr. Wilson is caught in a system that metes out disproportionately harsh sentences to black defendants.

Among the factors giving this matter the not-so-faint odor of racism are these:

1. The age of consent in Georgia is 16.
2. In 2006, the Georgia Legislature amended the statute to provide that oral sex between an under-18-year-old and a 13-to-15-year-old is only a misdemeanor, with a maximum penalty of a year in jail. This revised statute would have thus made the defendant’s conduct a misdemeanor had he committed his crime after the statute’s enactment, but the statute expressly provided that it wasn’t retroactive.
3. Even at the time the act occurred, genital sex between an under-18-year-old and a 14-or-15-year-old was also a misdemeanor.
4. This defendant had no criminal record that would justify an especially long sentence.

It’s a good thing they didn’t have these laws in Shakespeare’s time, or Romeo and Juliet, who were both underage, would have been in big trouble. (And Shakespeare might have been accused of writing child porn.)

Former Bush Cabinet Member Exploring GOP Run for Prez in ’08

Buck Banks

Delusions of grandeur: Former Bush cabinet member Tommy Thompson is apparently exploring a run for the presidency, according to Congressional Quarterly:

Tommy G. Thompson — a former Wisconsin governor who served in President Bush’s Cabinet — is officially exploring a bid for the Republican presidential nomination in 2008.

The former secretary of Health and Human Services registered his Thompson Presidential Exploratory Committee – 2008 with the Federal Election Commission on Dec. 13.

Thompson first came to national prominence during a 14-year tenure as governor of Wisconsin, during which he made his biggest mark by overhauling the state’s welfare system. He first won the office in 1990, unseating Democratic incumbent Anthony S. Earl by 53 percent to 46 percent. Although Wisconsin is a partisan battleground, if not slightly Democratic-leaning, Thompson proceeded to win a record three re-elections, all by landslide margins.

After winning his last race, in 1998, Thompson resigned in February 2001 to accept his nomination by Bush to head HHS. He served through Bush’s first term, then resigned in January 2005 and was succeeded by former Utah Republican Gov. Michael O. Leavitt.

Thompson had mulled returning to Wisconsin politics to run for the Senate or governor, but decided against it.

On This Date – December 19

Jon Ponder

1998 – Impeachment of Pres. Clinton

Pres. Clinton was impeached on December 19, 1998, by the House of Representatives and subsequently acquitted by the Senate on February 12, 1999. The charges were perjury and obstruction of justice, arising from the Lewinsky scandal. After a 21-day trial, the Senate vote fell short of the two-thirds majority required for conviction and removal from office under the Constitution. The impeachment proceedings were largely party-line, with no Democratic Senators voting for conviction and only three Democratic Representatives voting for impeachment.

In all, 55 senators voted “not guilty,” and 45 voted “guilty” on the charge of perjury. The Senate also acquitted on the obstruction charge with 50 votes cast each way. While the impeachment process dominated American politics for the better part of the year and took up much of the energy of the Clinton administration as it ran its course, it also failed to win the president’s opponents much of the political advantage that they sought. Opinion polls throughout the trial illustrated that the public opposed impeaching the president by margins of 65–70 percent and may have contributed to the subsequent loss of seats suffered by the Republican party in the United States House of Representatives and the Senate.

[Wiki]

Marijuana Is Nation’s Number One Cash Crop

Pensito Editors

In the early 1980s, when I lived in Charlotte, agricultural statistics were released that left a lot of straight-laced North Carolinians in shock: the state’s number one cash crop was not tobacco, which brought in $1 billion in revenue annually, it was homegrown marijuana, which produced upwards of $2 billion for Tarheel growers.

What trendsetters we were. New figures out from pot advocates indicate that marijuana is the number one cash crop in the country:

U.S. growers produce nearly $35 billion worth of marijuana annually, making the illegal drug the country’s largest cash crop, bigger than corn and wheat combined, an advocate of medical marijuana use said in a study released on Monday.

The report, conducted by Jon Gettman, a public policy analyst and former head of the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws, also concluded that five U.S. states produce more than $1 billion worth of marijuana apiece: California, Tennessee, Kentucky, Hawaii and Washington.

California’s production alone was about $13.8 billion, according to Gettman, who waged an unsuccessful six-year legal battle to force the government to remove marijuana from a list of drugs deemed to have no medical value.

Also heard but can’t confirm that the average age of pot-smokers is now 45 years old and older.

Haggard’s Church Launches Witch Hunt to Out Closeted Gay Staffers

Jon Ponder

Loving and accepting these men for who they are, as God made them, without judging them, apparently never crossed these Christians’ minds.

What would jesus do if one of his apostles was nabbed for lustful behavior? Why he would encourage the rest of the apostles to secretly turn in their colleagues for similar behavior, of course.

In the wake of the scandal caused by hidden sexuality of its former head pastor, Ted Haggard, that’s exactly what the leadership of New Life Church in Colorado did. They encouraged church members to secretly inform on other closeted gays on the staff. The Soviet-style turn-in-your-neighbors pogrom has already produced results, with the announcement of the resignation of an associate pastor:

Christopher Beard, who headed a ministry the New Life Church that trained young adults in leadership skills, has stepped down after admitting to an incident of sexual misconduct several years ago and a series of decisions displaying poor judgment.

Church elders declined to disclose what the sexual misconduct involved, except to say it did not involve minors…

Fearing another potential scandal that could destroy the 14,000 member church elders asked parishioners for information about the “spiritual character” of other church staff and leaders.

Members are urged to fill out a form on the church’s Web site that goes to a panel of four pastors from other churches that have agreed to help New Life weed out problem people.

Associate pastor Rob Brendle denies it is a witch hunt but says “we want to give people who feel they have relevant information access to people in authority.”

Loving and accepting these men for who they are, as God made them, without judging them, apparently never crossed these Christians’ minds.

Just think: If Jesus had encouraged his apostles to rat each other out, perhaps he would have gotten wind of Judas’ scheme to turn him over to the Romans, and he could have avoided the whole cruxifixion, ascending-into-heaven thing.