Tag: Conservative Values

It had to happen: Republicans have taken control of the government largely by abusing the trust of gullible Christian conservatives. Now it appears that one state GOP group has forgotten that there is supposed to be at least the appearance of a demarcation between the spheres of politics and church life.

Yesterday, the Greensboro News & Record reported that the North Carolina Republican Party was collecting church directories, and it quoted two local pastors as objecting to the practice. The Rev. Richard Byrd Jr. of Cornerstone Baptist Church in Greensboro said anyone who sent in a directory “would be betraying the trust of the membership,” and the Rev. Ken Massey of the city’s First Baptist Church said the request was “encroaching on sacred territory.”

Chris Mears, the state party’s political director, made the request in a Feb. 15 memo titled “The pew and the ballot box” that was sent by e-mail to “Registered Republicans in North Carolina.”

Mears said the “Republican National Committee has completed a study on grass-roots activity that reveals that people who regularly attend church usually vote Republican when they vote.”

“In light of this study’s findings, it is imperative that we register, educate and get these potential voters from the pew to the ballot box. To do this we must know who these people are,” the memo continued.

“I am requesting that you collect as many church directories as you can and send them to me in an effort to fully register, educate and energize North Carolina’s congregations to vote in the 2006 elections,” it said.

It added that the “North Carolina Republican Party holds your church’s directory in strict confidence” and will not use it “to solicit church members for any other reason.”

The North Carolina Republican Party’s demand that churches turn over databases containing their members’ contact information has upset ultra-right Christian extremists:

“Such a request is completely beyond the pale of what is acceptable,” said the Rev. Richard Land, head of the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission of the Southern Baptist Convention.

The surprising thing is that anyone is surprised by this.

Expect more fireworks at the White House press briefing today. During yesterday’s briefing, Bush spokesman Scott McClellan knew, but did not reveal to the White House press corps, that Harry Whittington, the man Vice President Cheney shot on Saturday, had suffered a major setback:

The White House continues to withhold critical information from the press. In a press conference today, hospital administrator Peter Banko said that the White House had been informed that Mr. Whittington suffered a heart attack between 9:30-10AM this morning.

But at [Tuesday’s] White House Press Briefing, which started after 12PM, Scott McClellan didn’t tell the press. CNN confirmed that McClellan “was notified [about the heart attack] just before the briefing.” But McClellan suggested to reporters that he had no new information:

I don’t want to make this about anything other than what it is. It is what it is. I was very respectful and responsive to your questions yesterday. I provided you the information I knew based on the facts that were available… I’m just not going to go back through it again.

McClellan concluded “You’re welcome to continue to focus on these issues. I’m moving on.” Too bad Mr. Whittington can’t do the same. He’ll be in the hospital for at least another week.

Exhuming McCarthy: Little did Veterans Administration nurse Laura Berg suspect that when she dashed off a letter to the editor of the Albuquerque weekly Alibi it would lead to her work computer being seized by her bosses, who also accused her of “sedition.” Let’s be clear here. Dr. Webster defines sedition as “the stirring up of discontent, resistance or rebellion against the government.” Judge for yourself if what Berg wrote, as reported in The Progressive, constitutes sedition:

“I am furious with the tragically misplaced priorities and criminal negligence of this government,” it began. “The Katrina tragedy in the U.S. shows that the emperor has no clothes!” She mentioned that she was “a VA nurse” working with returning vets. “The public has no sense of the additional devastating human and financial costs of post-traumatic stress disorder,” she wrote, and she worried about the hundreds of thousands of additional cases that might result from Katrina and the Iraq War.

“Bush, Cheney, Chertoff, Brown, and Rice should be tried for criminal negligence,” she wrote. “This country needs to get out of Iraq now and return to our original vision and priorities of caring for land and people and resources rather than killing for oil. . . . We need to wake up and get real here, and act forcefully to remove a government administration playing games of smoke and mirrors and vicious deceit.

Seditious? — “Bush, Cheney, Chertoff, Brown, and Rice should be tried for criminal negligence.”

Otherwise, many more of us will be facing living hell in these times.”

Thinking she wrote the letter on her work computer, her bosses at the VA seized her computer and, in a memo, accused her of sedition:

Mel Hooker, chief of the human resources management service at the Albuquerque VA, wrote Berg back on November 9 and acknowledged that “your personal computer files did not contain the editorial letter written to the editor of the weekly Alibi.”

But rather than apologize, he leveled the sedition charge: “The Agency is bound by law to investigate and pursue any act which potentially represents sedition,” he said. “In your letter . . . you declared yourself ‘as a VA nurse’ and publicly declared the Government which employs you to have ‘tragically misplaced priorities and criminal negligence’ and advocated, ‘act forcefully to remove a government administration playing games of smoke and mirrors and vicious deceit.’ ”

Berg has worked as a VA nurse for 15 years and is concerned for her job. The New Mexico office of the American Civil Liberties Union is working with her to clear her name, but so far, the VA has not admitted wrongdoing nor has it apologized.

U.S. News & World Report:

President Bush was only seconds into his State of the Union speech Tuesday night when we saw our first sign of blatant hypocrisy.

After Bush paid a lofty tribute to the late Coretta Scott King, Republicans and Democrats alike rose in applause. Behind the president, so did Vice President Cheney. He should have remained in his seat.

Perhaps Cheney would like everyone, including the TV viewers, to forget that as a congressman from Wyoming, his vote in 1979 against making Martin Luther King’s birthday a national holiday helped block the legislation.

Compassionate conservativism at work: A rightwing nutjob has come out saying that Americans should demand that the mainstream media reprint the cartoons depicting the Muslim prophet Mohammed that have riled up the Muslim world as a demonstration of our freedom.

The cartoons were first published by a Danish newspaper in September — five months ago. They were reprinted in other European newspapers and have prompted rioting in the Middle East, burning of embassies and consulates, at least one death and numerous injuries, and even demonstrations in the United States.

And now this hothead wants to turn up the heat. I’m sure to some people this kind of rabid rhetoric has a twisted kind of logic:

“Americans need to see for themselves what has outraged Islamofascists in certain parts of the world,” said William Greene, president of the on-line organization, RightMarch.com. “Many Christians and Jews have had to endure the satirizing of their own religious figures. It’s called the free expression of ideas. We shouldn’t apologize for freedom — we’re trying to spread it, and an honest public debate is at the very center of that freedom.

“After 9-11, Americans didn’t take to the streets to burn down embassies, attack civilians and spark riots. We showed great restraint and courtesy to the foreign dignitaries living as guests in our nation. It’s not weakness; it’s strength, and the ultimate test of freedom, which is God’s gift to man,” Green said.

Sounds real Christian-like, don’t it?

These people are like rabid dogs:

House Republicans are taking a mulligan on the first ballot for Majority Leader. The first count showed more votes cast than Republicans present at the Conference meeting.