Police in St. Petersburg, Florida, have arrested a popular teacher in a bizarre alleged crime. Danielle Harkins, 35, is accused of telling students that they have demons inside them and that the only way to be rid of them is to cut themselves and then burn the wounds. They proceeded to do so and she is now charged with child abuse.
Category: Religion
New York is facing a couple of religious challenges to barring recruits from the police academy. The first is a Jewish applicant who was fired for failing to cut his beard to a proscribed length. The second is a Muslim applicant who was fired for saying that he believed homosexuals should be locked up in answering a series of questions on a police form.
Continue reading “NYPD Facing Religious Challenges From Jewish and Muslim Applicants”
Remember Terry Jones’s Dove World Outreach Center with his penchant for burning Korans? He is now turning his hate-filled message of healing to people with an Obama effigy hanging from gallows in front of his church. For those who seem to embrace religion as an excuse to hate, it is the perfect recruitment message.
Continue reading “Florida Pastor Hangs Obama In Effigy As Latest Hate-Filled Message”
Once again, I find myself reading a translation of a Muslim cleric and trying to confirm that this is not a hoax. London-based Kuwaiti Shiite Cleric Yasser Al-Habib is shown on the video below reportedly saying that Satan turns certain babies by sticking his finger in the anus of babies and that gays crave “penetration” due to a “worm.” As with the recent Christian minister calling for death camps of gays, I am often left skeptical on such hate-filled nonsense could be espoused by even the most extreme religious figures. However, this translation is appearing on various websites.
This story is one of the saddest statements of the reality in our public schools. Jake Balthazor, 15, of Coon Rapids, Minnesota was told to take off a rosary that he wore as a sign of support of his cancer-ridden grandmother. The reason? No, not the separation of church and state. It is because a gang uses the rosary as a gang symbol and teachers did not want any trouble.
Continue reading “Minnesota Student Ordered To Remove Rosary As Gang Symbol”
Submitted by: Mike Spindell, guest blogger
My father had a favorite saying with which was to excoriate me on the many occasions when I had misbehaved. “The Road to Hell is paved with Good Intentions”. He used this to chastise me for some bad behavior, but more importantly to give me guidance of the “slippery-slope” that I was on when I behaved badly. Although it’s been 50 years since his death his words have remained with me even though I’ve aged into a man who’s lived far longer than he had. It’s been my observation that there is truth to this cliche, yet it does represent a form of logic, the “slippery-slope”, which can often also be specious. When I read this New York Times Article: “Slippery-Slope Logic, Applied to Health Care” by Economist Richard H. Thaler, Published: May 12, 2012http://www.nytimes.com/2012/05/13/business/economy/slippery-slope-logic-vs-health-care-law-economic-view.html , I was again reminded of my Father’s admonitions and began to think about the use of “slippery-slope” logic. As it relates to SCOTUS and health care Mr. Thaler’s critique of the “slippery-slope” logic being applied by Justice Scalia did ring true:
“Consider these now-famous comments about broccoli from Justice Antonin G. Scalia during the oral arguments. “Everybody has to buy food sooner or later, so you define the market as food,” he said. “Therefore, everybody is in the market. Therefore, you can make people buy broccoli.” ”
“Justice Scalia is arguing that if the court lets Congress create a mandate to buy health insurance, nothing could stop Congress from passing laws requiring everyone to buy broccoli and to join a gym.”
“Please stop! The very fact that a slippery slope is being cited as grounds for declaring the law unconstitutional — despite that “significant deference” usually given to laws passed by Congress — tells you all that you need to know about the argument’s validity. Can anyone imagine Congress passing a broccoli mandate law, much less the court allowing it to take effect?”
These are excepts from Mr. Thaler’s article. His short column is well worth reading for his examples of the problem with “slippery-slope” logic. My piece though, is neither about health care, nor SCOTUS. I’d like to explore the question of the validity of “slippery-slope” arguments that have been commonly used in public discourse and whether we would be better off as a society if we ignored them. Continue reading “The Slippery Slope”
This morning, the Idaho Attorney General and Director of the Idaho State Liquor Division was informed that Ogden’s Own Distillery has retained my services to challenge the decision to block sales of “Five Wives Vodka” in Idaho. The businesses in Idaho were denied the right to “special order” the vodka because it was viewed as offensive to the large Mormon population in the state. The state also denied “general listing” to allow stores to sell the product. As on our other cases, I have to be circumspect on what I can say about the case in light of the pending litigation.
Continue reading “Utah Distillery To Challenge Idaho Ban On “Five Wives Vodka””
We have another preacher who is holding forth on homosexuality with some pretty shocking rhetoric. Dennis Leatherman of the Mountain Lake Independent Baptist Church in Oakland, Maryland can claim to be more merciful because, while he says that he positively aches to kill gays “in a fleshy way,” he cannot actually kill because of the Bible. That means that he cannot build the death camps of Rev. Worley — as much as he might want to.
Continue reading “Leatherman: I Long To Kill Gays “In A Fleshy Way””
We have previously discussed the trend in the West toward an international blasphemy standard and prosecutions for insulting religion (here, and here, and here and here and here and here and here and and here and here and here and here). Now, one of Spain’s best known underground artists is facing a year in jail for a 54-second film that he did in 1978 that a Catholic group charges is insulting to them and their faith. Javier Krahe’s “how to cook Jesus Christ” was a brief satire based on a cooking show.
Continue reading “Spanish Artist Faces Prison For Insulting The Catholic Faith”
Respectfully submitted by Lawrence Rafferty (rafflaw)-Guest Blogger
I am sure you have all seen the comments and political advertisements and articles calling President Obama a Communist, a Socialist, a Kenyan citizen and various attempts to claim that he is a secret Muslim. I had thought I had seen them all when I came across the latest affront to reality. A Gannet newspaper in Louisiana has agreed to run an “interesting” advertisement from an organization calling itself the SOAR Project. SOAR stands for Save Our American Republic.
In my humble opinion, this advertisement goes far beyond any level of reasonableness when it leads with the question, “Will Obama and the Democrats Shoot Catholics and Christians “? Continue reading “Free Speech Versus Facts”
by Gene Howington, Guest Blogger
In the beginning, there was the word. And when addressing propaganda, the word was either persuade or coerce. This is the essential nature of propaganda: to change (or re-enforce if you are already sympathetic) your mind on a particular issue. As the first article showed, the most basic tool of propaganda is connotation/implication. Before venturing into the depths of the lingua tactical of propaganda, I thought it might be useful to illustrate some non-verbal and indirect methods of propaganda.
First we must realize that propaganda is the cultivation of an image. An image that relies upon idea(s) the speaker wants associated with certain people, organizations or actions. To that end, propaganda is essentially image control: seeking to create mental associations in the viewer be they emotional or rational and spreading that image/association through out a given populace. Keep in mind that literacy was for the bulk of human history limited to specialists such as scribes and/or the upper class who could afford education.
Very few people in the ancient world could read, but most of them could see. What better way to communicate the power of those who run a society to those who cannot read than by using a non-verbal symbol to send a message? Perhaps a symbol like a great building or monument. Something that says “we’re here, this is what we are about, this is our place and look what we can do” to the great unlearned masses. This form of propaganda is also as old as civilization. You could argue that it is older than modern civilization, stretching back to the late Neolithic period.
Continue reading “Propaganda 101 Supplemental: Build It And They Will Come (Around)”
By Mark Esposito, Guest Blogger
Well, Sally Field must be aghast. How could even her bird’s-eye view have predicted the over the top report from the Vatican’s Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith? Once the province of current Pope Benedict, the watchdog of orthodoxy that took such a hands-off approach to the child sexual molestation within the priesthood, has issued a stinging reprimand to all American nuns for “certain radical feminist themes incompatible with the Catholic faith.”
Headed by American Cardinal William Levada, the crowd that gave us the Inquisition and who tried Galileo, has ordered a crackdown on all U.S. nuns. Overseen by three middle-aged white men American bishops, the Vatican wants the good sisters to toe the Vatican’s increasingly fundamentalist line. And what was the doctrinal crime that got the nuns in trouble? Why, their apparent heretical support for such outlandish positions as supporting universal health care under Obama’s plan, sensitivity to marriage rights for gays, and –God forbid it — advocating females for admission to the priesthood. They are even under scrutiny for praying for Girl Scouts.
Continue reading “American Nuns Reprimanded For “Radical Feminism” By Vatican”
-Submitted by David Drumm (Nal), Guest Blogger
In his Slate article, Bad Religion, Ross Douthat argues that even bad religions “have a metaphysically coherent picture of the universe to justify their claims.” Douthat’s argument evokes the Euthyphro Dilemma, inspired by one of Plato’s dialogues. The dialogue features Socrates and religious expert Euthyphro, and has been modernized as “Are morally good acts willed by God because they are morally good, or are they morally good because they are willed by God?”
Attorney General Eric Holder has been criticized repeatedly for actions viewed as political (or his abandoning independent role) during the Clinton Administration and the Obama Administration. Few, however, seem quite as raw as his participation in an upcoming event to advise black ministers on how far they can go in campaigning in this presidential election, presumably for President Obama who is expected to secure the overwhelming percentage of African American votes. The event is being hosted by the Congressional Black Caucus and will include appearances by other government officials like IRS officials. While the CBC is bipartisan, there remain questions about the propriety of the appearance.
As we put the finishing touches on the summary judgment motion and brief in the Sister Wives case, a friend sent me this story out of Idaho. Five Wives Vodka has been told by the state of Idaho that it will ban the booze as insulting to the large Mormon population.
Continue reading “Idaho Bans “Five Wives Vodka” As Insulting To Mormons”