As protests continue over the power grab of President Mohammed Morsi, Islamists pushed through a draft constitution without the involvement of Christian or liberal members to give Muslim clerics oversight over legislation and add restrictions to free speech, women’s rights, and other civil liberties.
Category: Religion
We have another chilling tale of the plight of women in some traditional Islamic areas. A woman known as Nurbanu had divorced her husband when she found him in bed with another woman. The husband than responded to the divorce by throwing acid in her face — an all-too-common crime against women in the Middle East. The woman was disfigured and blinded, but the husband received only one year of jail for the crime. Nurbanu said she was then coerced to remarry him and he now allegedly continues to beat her. Warning the picture below is graphic and disturbing.
The ABA Journal has released its list of the top 100 legal blogs in the world and we are once again in this august group of blogs. Congratulations to all of our regulars contributors and weekend bloggers. We have previously taken the top spot under the opinion category in the past but the ABA has now eliminated that category. Even more ominous was the decision to put the largest blogs in direct competition under an expanded “News/Analysis” category. This includes the long dominant “Above the Law” site. We would have to punch considerably above our weight to beat “Above the Law,” which is ranking regularly in the top two most visited legal sites in the world. Frankly, it is like a dingy going up against a battleship. However, we have never flinched in the face of superior numbers. So it is time to vote! It takes a very quick registration. Just click here and cast your vote today!
Continue reading “TURLEY BLOG MAKES ABA TOP 100 — NOW IT IS TIME TO VOTE FOR THE TOP BLOG!”
We have previously discussed the war on atheists and agnostics that seems to be accelerating with the rise of people claiming to have no religious affiliation or belief in God in the United States, according to recent polls. There is a steady stream of statements from the national and international campaign by leaders against atheists, who appear to be fair game for hateful, ill-informed rhetoric. While you may have seen this already, Pat Robertson pushed this trend to a new low: telling his many viewers that atheists want to everyone to be miserable because they are miserable. They therefore what “to steal your holiday [Christmas] away from you.”
Continue reading “Robertson: Atheists Want People To Be Miserable And To Steal “Your Holiday””
Submitted by: Mike Spindell, Guest Blogger
As a visceral person who loves film, I am easily moved when I watch productions that connect the struggles of human beings with the vicissitudes of life. This week I watched such a creation and its’ genius was that it led me to thoughts larger than the particular subject of the program. Hubris is an ancient Greek word that can be thought of as indicating: “a loss of contact with reality and an overestimation of one’s own competence or capabilities, especially when the person exhibiting it is in a position of power”. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hubris . To the ancient Greeks, hubris played an important part in their philosophy and in their philosophic expression in Greek dramas. In those times sexuality was also deeply intertwined in its examples. However: “In its modern use, hubris denotes overconfident pride and arrogance; it is often associated with a lack of humility, though not always with the lack of knowledge.” I intend to extrapolate from one desperate time in American history a sense of what fault it exposes in a macro-cosmic human sense.
Along with the “Great Depression” in the United States, an ecological disaster occurred and added to the general economic misery of the country. This was the advent of the “Dust Bowl” in the agricultural “heartland” of our country. The documentary I watched was “Ken Burns: The Dust Bowl” which I’ll link at the end of this guest blog. From 1930 through 1940 immense dust storms, with ever increasing frequency, began to plague this area along with a parching drought, devastating this formerly fertile region. As the farming economy shrank, children died and farm folk were driven into despair, it became apparent that this ecological disaster was brought about by the people who had worked the land into becoming among the most productive farmlands in the world. I watched this documentary, tearing up frequently at the human misery I saw and clenching my jaw in anger at the sheer cupidity that caused it. I was rediscovering a part of our history that I had known little about except for where it happened. By retelling this tale though I want to make a larger point. The Greeks had it right about humanity in general, in that as we have become masters of this planet, so many of us have so often been laid low by the hubris of thinking ourselves completely in control of our world and immune to the effects of nature. Continue reading “Humanity’s Hubris”
-Submitted by David Drumm (Nal), Guest Blogger
It’s that time of year again. That time when many Christians imagine themselves persecuted by a secular “War on Christmas.” Interestingly, the “War on Christmas” has Christian roots. Pilgrims, who were strict Puritans, believed that “[t]hey for whom all days are holy can have no holiday.” Those holidays also included Christmas and Easter. Thanksgiving to the Pilgrims would have not been a holy day.
-Submitted by David Drumm (Nal), Guest Blogger
John F. MacArthur writes, in his article The atheist’s Thanksgiving dilemma, that “Thankfulness is one of the distinguishing traits of the human spirit.” Many of us certainly know this feeling. Ironically, the article is subtitled: Whom to thank when there’s no recipient?
Just when you thought that the Saudi Kingdom could not make things more demeaning for women, male guardians reportedly will now be informed of the movement of women in their family under an electronic monitoring system. Women are not allowed to drive or to travel without consent of a male, even a younger brother.
Continue reading “Report: Saudi Government Monitoring Travel of Women and Alerting Male “Guardians””
Happy Thanksgiving to everyone. This is my favorite holiday with all of the essential elements of joy: food, friends, and football. Continue reading “HAPPY THANKSGIVING!”
We have another judge who has decided to create his own system of criminal punishment with novel sentencing. Oklahoma judge Mike Norman has magnified this increasingly common form of judicial abuse by adding compelled religious observance to sentence. Norman deferred a prison sentence for Tyler Alred, 17, in exchange for his agreement to attend church for 10 years. Norman observed “[t]he Lord works in many ways,” including it appears through him and his court. While many would view the imposition of religious observance in a criminal sentence as something akin to an American Taliban court, Norman insists that he has judicially ordered religious practices in the past.
Florida Sen. Marco Rubio has already started the process for running for president in 2016 with an appearance in Iowa. He has begun in classic form. In 2008, many people were shocked when most of the GOP candidates said that they did not believe in evolution. Rubio has now added his voice as denying scientific reality to court evangelical votes. Rubio insisted in an interview with GQ that the age of the Earth remains “one of the great mysteries.” Of course, the age of the Earth is about as much of a “mystery” as whether the Sun revolves around the Earth or the Earth revolves around the Sun. The age is roughly 4.5 billions years — an inconvenient fact to be sure, but a fact.
Continue reading “Rubio: Age of Earth Remains “One of the Great Mysteries””
The Church of Scientology is the focus of new charges of potentially criminal wrongdoing in the death of a church member. A federal lawsuit details allegations that the Church spent millions to influence judges and lawyers to scuttle homicide allegations in the death of Lisa McPherson in 1995. The allegations of corrupt practices are directed at known judges and lawyers, including the lawyer for the coroner in the investigation into the death. The former number two of the Church says that he believes the Church spent at least $30 million to get criminal charges dropped.
It truly sounds like something out of Saturday Night Live: the Taliban inadvertently revealed their contacts when someone hit the “reply all” button on an email which showed their entire mailing list. The Taliban are known as cave dwelling Troglodytes who destroyed ancient artifacts and pushed much of Afghanistan back into the dark ages. Thus, it could not happen to a more deserving group of guys.
Continue reading “Taliban Spokesman Inadvertently Discloses Whole Mailing List In Email”
-Submitted by David Drumm (Nal), Guest Blogger
Savita Halappanavar, a 31-year old dentist, had the bad fortune to have her pregnancy go wrong in Ireland, referred to, by hospital officials, as a “Catholic country.” Savita was 17 weeks pregnant when, on October 21, she arrived at University Hospital Galway complaining of back pain. She was found to be miscarrying.
Savita was in severe pain for three days in the hospital and requested a termination. Savita and her husband were led to believe that the law would not allow a termination until there was no fetal heartbeat. Savita died of septicemia a week after entering the hospital.
With have previously discussed calls for Islamic extremists to destroy or cover up the Pyramids as an offense to Allah. Now, islamic leader Murgan Salem al-Gohary has called for the destruction of the iconic structures as well as the Sphinx — citing the Taliban as a model for such destruction when they destroyed the famous giant Buddhas of Bamiyan to the disgust and anger of the world community. Murgan Salem al-Gohary is clearly an extremist and not someone that most Egyptians or Muslims would follow. However a far more worrisome development is the huge demonstration in Egypt a few days ago calling for the country to impose Sharia law on its citizens.