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INQUISITORIAL NEWS
LIGHT OF THE WORLD
Reporting on the Folly of Faith,
the Aberrations of Belief,
the Ruse of Religion

VOLUME III
2011

VOLUME I ~ 2009

noose coverage
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VOLUME III ~ 2011

RELIGION REVEALED
PRESS, ESSAYS AND EDITORIALS
Click √ on Images at LEFT for full texts

Created by man, SUPERSTITIONS, all equal.

GLUE

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

RELIGION

"A sense of humor, properly developed, is superior to any
religion so far devised."
~ TOM ROBBINS

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Religious Groups Upset Over New Exhibit Set To Open At Brooklyn Museum
Gay-Themed Art With Controversial Video Clip Draws Ire Of Catholic Leader
CBS News: November 10, 2011

NEW YORK — Is it art, or is it sacrilege? There’s a controversy at the Brooklyn Museum over an upcoming exhibit.

Brooklyn Bishop Nicholas DiMarzio said a sacrilege is about to go on display at the museum with the debut next week of “Hide/Seek,” an exhibit focused on gay-themed art. “You take any sacred thing, and make fun of it or treat it with disrespect, that’s sacrilegious,” DiMarzio said. “Since the population of Brooklyn is a good percent, Catholic, 40 percent, I think we should object,” DiMarzio said.

When Hide/Seek was shown last year in Washington D.C., it included a video called “A Fire In My Belly,” which briefly shows ants marching across a crucifix.

But it’s not just Catholic leaders who are complaining.

“There has to be lines of respect that are drawn. And like someone said, they wouldn’t do this to Mohammed. It’s just that Christians haven’t, you know, expressed outrage the way that some other communities would,” Christian Cultural Center Pastor A.R. Bernard said

A FIRE IN MY BELLY

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In Georgia, Some Vote to Stay Dry on Sundays
By ROBBIE BROWN
The New York Times: November 11, 2011

ELBERTON, Ga. — The joke in Georgia after Tuesday’s election was that the most popular name on the ballot was Jack Daniel’s.

After years of debating whether to do away with a century-old law that banned selling alcohol on Sundays, Georgia politicians decided to let the people vote, city by city and county by county, on what they preferred in their communities. The results were resounding: 105 of the 127 communities that voted chose to end the Sunday restriction, often by huge margins. And before polls closed, supporters were announcing celebrations at liquor stores.

But here in Elbert County, a rural, deeply religious region of northeast Georgia, residents were not raising a toast. They voted to keep Sundays alcohol-free.

“The Bible says no to strong drink, and I’m proud that people around here agree,” said Jerry Beggs, 70, a retired machine technician, as he spelled out a message on Thursday on the marquee at Forest Hill Assembly of God Church, where he is a member. “Thanks for voting no to sell alcohol on Sunday,” it read.

Religiously motivated blue laws were once common across the Bible Belt. But over the decades, they have been struck down as anachronistic or unfriendly to business. Georgia was the last Southern bastion of a statewide all-day ban on Sunday alcohol sales in package or grocery stories.

Religiously motivated blue laws were once common across the Bible Belt. But over the decades, they have been struck down as anachronistic or unfriendly to business. Georgia was the last Southern bastion of a statewide all-day ban on Sunday alcohol sales in package or grocery stories.

“This nation has a trend of turning away from good morals,” said Patsy Scarborough, a retired secretary and a church pianist. “Americans need to be in church on Sunday, not out buying alcohol.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Preaching Virtue of Spanking, Even as Deaths Fuel Debate
By ERIK ECKHOLM
The New York Times: November 6, 2011

PLEASANTVILLE, Tenn. — After services at the Church at Cane Creek on a recent Sunday, a few dozen families held a potluck picnic and giggling children played pin the tail on the donkey.

The white-bearded preacher, Michael Pearl, who delivered his sermon in stained work pants, and his wife, Debi, mixed warmly with the families drawn to their evangelical ministry, including some of their own grandchildren.

The pastoral mood in the hills of Tennessee offered a stark contrast to the storm raging around the country over the Pearls’ teachings on child discipline, which advocate systematic use of “the rod” to teach toddlers to submit to authority. The methods, seen as common sense by some grateful parents and as horrific by others, are modeled, Mr. Pearl is fond of saying, on “the same principles the Amish use to train their stubborn mules.”

Debate over the Pearls’ teachings, first seen on Christian Web sites, gained new intensity after the death of a third child, all allegedly at the hands of parents who kept the Pearls’ book, “To Train Up a Child,” in their homes. On Sept. 29, the parents were charged with homicide by abuse.

In May, Hana Williams, who was adopted when she was 11, was found face down, naked and emaciated in the backyard of her home in Sedro Wooley, Wash. Her death was caused by hypothermia and malnutrition, the coroner determined, and a sheriff’s report said that she had been beaten often, including on the day of her death.

Hana’s mother had praised the Pearls’ book and given a copy to a friend, the report said.

More than 670,000 copies of the Pearls’ self-published book are in circulation, and it is especially popular among Christian home-schoolers, who praise it in their magazines and on their Web sites. The Pearls provide instructions on using a switch from as early as six months to discourage misbehavior and describe how to make use of implements for hitting on the arms, legs or back, including a quarter-inch flexible plumbing line that, Mr. Pearl notes, “can be rolled up and carried in your pocket.”

The furor in part reflects societal disagreements over corporal punishment, which conservative Christians say is called for in the Bible and which many Americans consider reasonable up to a point, even as many parents and pediatricians reject it. The issue flared recently when a video was posted online of a Texas judge whipping his daughter.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Population Control, Marauder Style
By BILL MARSH
The New York Times: November 5, 2011

Last week, the United Nations announced that the world’s population had reached seven billion, but there have been times when it headed in the opposite direction, and not in pleasant ways. The savagery of the Mongol conqueror Genghis Khan may have culled the global population by about 11 percent; two bloody upheavals in China — the An Lushan Rebellion and the collapse of the Xin Dynasty — each may have felled about 6 percent of humanity. Those are but 3 of the 100 worst atrocities in history, as cataloged by Matthew White in “The Great Big Book of Horrible Things,” an amusing (really) account of the murderous ways of despots, slave traders, blundering royals, gladiators and assorted hordes. Estimating the tolls from such horrors is an inexact science, given war’s nature and the mysteries of antiquity. The deadliest “multicides” are more plentiful in recent centuries, given that there were more people to kill and better ways to kill them on a grand scale. Even so, killings as a percentage of all humanity are probably declining. Here is a look at the sweep of human brutality presented in a timeline.

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	The GREAT BIG BOOK of HORRIBLE THINGS The Definitive Chronicle of History's 100 Worst Atrocities

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LINDA GREENHOUSE

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Not Following the ‘Leader’
By LINDA GREENHOUSE
THE NEW YORK TIMES: November 2, 2011

Monday of this week, when the Supreme Court ducked yet another case on the constitutionality of the display of religious symbols on public land. This case (actually a pair of petitions appealing the lower court’s judgment) concerned the placement of a dozen 12-foot-high crosses along state highways in Utah to commemorate the deaths of state highway patrol officers in the line of duty.

A private group, the Utah Highway Patrol Association, erected and owns the crosses, each of which carries the name, rank and badge number of an officer along its six-foot-long crossbeam. The state permitted their placement along the public right of way so that they could be seen by passing motorists. A federal appeals court ruled that because the crosses “convey to a reasonable observer that the state of Utah is endorsing Christianity,” their placement amounted to an unconstitutional “establishment” of religion.

The Supreme Court doesn’t explain itself when it turns down a request for review. So the only way to know whether a petition even got the court’s attention before being automatically denied (denial is the court’s default mode, the fate of any petition that at least one justice doesn’t ask to discuss at the justices’ private weekly conference) is when someone publishes a dissent from the denial. In this instance, Justice Thomas published a 19-page dissent  from the denial of review in Utah Highway Patrol Association v. American Atheists, Inc.

The dissent was a vivid tour through the incoherent landscape of the court’s Establishment Clause jurisprudence.

I had been watching this case since the summer, and I thought the court would find it hard to resist. That was a prediction, not a wish; unlike Justice Thomas, I think the lower court got this one right, and I find the argument for regarding a collection of 12-foot-high crosses along a state’s highways as anything other than an official endorsement of Christian belief to be almost laughably weak.

In fact, not that it matters, but just to be clear, Justice Thomas and I would disagree across the entire range of Establishment Clause cases. He holds a view that is unique among the justices (there’s that leadership thing again), namely that the Establishment Clause applies only to the federal government and not, as the court has maintained since 1947, to the states as well. He also believes that the clause prohibits only “actual legal coercion,” and not the kind of implicit official endorsement of religious practice that makes members of minority faiths, or nonbelievers, feel like outsiders.

The actual target of Justice Thomas’s dissent on Monday was not so much the denial of review in the Utah case as the court’s continued adherence to the approach it has evolved in recent years for discerning a line between the permissible and the forbidden in official recognition of religion. The current “endorsement” test was the creation of Justice Sandra Day O’Connor, who retired nearly six years ago. Justice Thomas is probably correct in his speculation on Monday that this approach no longer commands majority support on the court.

The problem is, neither does anything else. Unless the court accepts either his view that anything goes, which it won’t, or the view advocated by another retired justice, John Paul Stevens, that almost nothing goes, which it also won’t, those determined to claim a corner of the public square in which to display their religious devotion will keep on doing it, and we appear doomed to be ruled in this realm, as in so many others, by the case-by-case exercise of human judgment.

A scary thought – perhaps one that scared the justices themselves as, contemplating whether to grant the Utah case, they stood on the brink with Clarence Thomas and decided not to jump.

NICHOLAS KRISTOF

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Birth Control Solution
By NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF, OP-ED COLUMNIST
The New York Times: November 2, 2011

What if there were a solution to many of the global problems that confront us, from climate change to poverty to civil wars? There is, but it is starved of resources. It’s called family planning, and it has been a victim of America’s religious wars.

Partly for that reason, the world’s population just raced past the seven billion mark this week, at least according to the fuzzy calculations of United Nations demographers. It took humans hundreds of thousands of years, until the year 1804, to reach the first billion. It took another 123 years to reach two billion, in 1927. Since then, we’ve been passing these milestones like billboards along a highway. The latest billion took just a dozen years.

In 1999, the United Nations’ best projection was that the world wouldn’t pass seven billion until 2013, but we reached it two years early. Likewise, in 1999, the U.N. estimated that the world population in 2050 would be 8.9 billion, but now it projects 9.3 billion.

Traditionally, support for birth control was bipartisan. The Roman Catholic hierarchy was opposed, but Republican presidents like Richard Nixon and George H.W. Bush provided strong support. Then family planning became tarnished by overzealous and coercive programs in China and India, and contraception became entangled in America’s abortion wars. Many well-meaning religious conservatives turned against it, and funding lagged. The result was, paradoxically, more abortions. When contraception is unavailable, the likely consequence is not less sex, but more pregnancy.

Contraception already prevents 112 million abortions a year, by U.N. estimates. The United Nations Population Fund is a bête noire for conservatives, but its promotion of contraception means that it may have reduced abortions more than any organization in the world.

Republicans are seeking to cut more money from global family planning — which, in poor countries, would mean more abortions and more women dying in childbirth. Conservatives have also sought to slash Title X Family Planning programs within the United States. The Guttmacher Institute estimates that in a year these domestic programs avert 973,000 unintended pregnancies, of which 406,000 would end in abortions.

Guttmacher calculates that these family-planning centers in the United States actually save taxpayers roughly $3.4 billion annually that would otherwise be spent on pregnancies and babies.

Finally, a ray of hope: A group of evangelical Christians, led by Richard Cizik of The New Evangelical Partnership for the Common Good, is drafting a broad statement of support for family planning. It emphasizes that family planning reduces abortion and lives lost in childbirth.

“Family planning is morally laudable in Christian terms because of its contribution to family well-being, women’s health, and the prevention of abortion,” the draft says.

Amen! Contraceptives no more cause sex than umbrellas cause rain.

So as we greet the seven-billionth human, let’s try to delay the arrival of the eight billionth. We should all be able to agree on voluntary family planning as a cost-effective strategy to reduce poverty, conflict and environmental damage. If you think family planning is expensive, you haven’t priced babies.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Push for ‘Personhood’ Amendment Represents New Tack in Abortion Fight
By ERIK ECKHOLM
The New York Times: October 25, 2011

A constitutional amendment facing voters in Mississippi on Nov. 8, and similar initiatives brewing in half a dozen other states including Florida and Ohio, would declare a fertilized human egg to be a legal person, effectively branding abortion and some forms of birth control as murder.

With this far-reaching anti-abortion strategy, the proponents of what they call personhood amendments hope to reshape the national debate.

“I view it as transformative,” said Brad Prewitt, a lawyer and executive director of the Yes on 26 campaign, which is named for the Mississippi proposition. “Personhood is bigger than just shutting abortion clinics; it’s an opportunity for people to say that we’re made in the image of God.”

Many doctors and women’s health advocates say the proposals would cause a dangerous intrusion of criminal law into medical care, jeopardizing women’s rights and even their lives.

The amendment in Mississippi would ban virtually all abortions, including those resulting from rape or incest. It would bar some birth control methods, including IUDs and “morning-after pills” that prevent fertilized eggs from implanting in the uterus. It would also outlaw the destruction of embryos created in laboratories.

The amendment has been endorsed by candidates for governor from both major parties, and it appears likely to pass, said W. Martin Wiseman, director of the John C. Stennis Institute of Government at Mississippi State University. Legal challenges would surely follow, but even if the amendment is ultimately declared unconstitutional, it could disrupt vital care, critics say, and force years of costly court battles.

“This is the most extreme in a field of extreme anti-abortion measures that have been before the states this year,” said Nancy Northrup, president of the Center for Reproductive Rights, a legal advocacy group.

Opponents, who were handing out brochures on Saturday to tailgate partiers before the University of Southern Mississippi football game in Hattiesburg, said they hoped to dispel the impression that the amendment simply bars abortions — a popular idea in Mississippi — by warning that it would also limit contraceptives, make doctors afraid to save women with life-threatening pregnancies and possibly hamper in vitro fertility treatments.

The drive for personhood amendments has split the anti-abortion forces nationally. Some groups call it an inspired moral leap, while traditional leaders of the fight, including National Right to Life and the Roman Catholic bishops, have refused to promote it, charging that the tactic is reckless and could backfire, leading to a Supreme Court defeat that would undermine progress in carving away at Roe v. Wade.

 

The ‘Personhood’ Initiative
EDITORIAL
The New York Times: October 27, 2011

A ballot measure going before voters in Mississippi on Nov. 8 would define the term “person” in the State Constitution to include fertilized human eggs and grant to fertilized eggs the legal rights and protections that apply to people. It is among the most extreme assaults in the push to end women’s reproductive rights.

The aim is to redefine abortion and some of the most widely used forms of contraception as murder, obliterating a woman’s right to make childbearing decisions under the 1973 Supreme Court decision Roe v. Wade.

Besides outlawing all abortions, with no exceptions for rape or incest or when a woman’s life is in danger, and banning any contraception that may prevent implantation of a fertilized egg, including birth control pills, the amendment carries many implications, some quite serious.

It could curtail medical research involving embryos, shutter fertility clinics and put doctors in legal jeopardy for providing needed medical care that might endanger a pregnancy. Pregnant women also could become subject to criminal prosecution. A fertilized egg might be eligible to inherit money or be counted when drawing voting districts by population. Because a multitude of laws use the terms “person” or “people,” there would be no shortage of unintended consequences.

A similar ballot measure was handily rejected by Colorado voters in 2008 and 2010. But, in Mississippi, which has already imposed so many burdensome restrictions that the state has only one abortion clinic, there is a real possibility that voters will not react as wisely. Voter approval could energize similar “personhood” initiatives in half a dozen other states, including Florida and Ohio.

Both the Republican and Democratic candidates for governor in Mississippi have endorsed the measure, even though some traditional leaders in the anti-abortion battle, including National Right to Life, have declined to do so, viewing it as a reckless strategy that could lead to a defeat in the Supreme Court. This extreme measure would protect zygotes at the expense of all women while creating a legal quagmire — at least until the courts rule it unconstitutional, as they should.

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Revolution Won, Top Libyan Official Vows a New and More Pious State
Abdel-Jalil Promises a Role for Islam in a New Libya
By ADAM NOSSITER and KAREEM FAHIM
The New York Times: October 23, 2011

BENGHAZI, Libya — The leader of the transitional government declared to thousands of revelers in a sunlit square here on Sunday that Libya’s revolution had ended, setting the country on the path to elections, and he vowed that the new government would be based on Islamic tenets.

The most powerful force in the fledgling state, the armed groups remain a law unto themselves. The threat they pose was underscored with the discovery Sunday of at least 53 bodies, people who appeared to have been executed, possibly by anti-Qaddafi fighters.

Two strands — a new piety and all-purpose, freewheeling happiness — dominated the ceremony. When Mustafa Abdel-Jalil (left), the chairman of the Transitional National Council, pronounced the end of the uprising, the crowd reacted with shouts of “God is great.”

“We are an Islamic country,” he said as the sun descended. “We take the Islamic religion as the core of our new government. The constitution will be based on our Islamic religion.”

Among other things, he promised that Islamic banks would be established in the new Libya. He also talked of lifting restrictions on the number of women Libyan men can marry, The Associated Press reported.

The comments reflected not only the chairman’s personal religious conservatism and the country’s, but also the rising influence of Islamists among the former rebels. The Islamists, who include some influential militia commanders, have warned that they will not permit their secular counterparts in a new government to sideline them.

Some of the secular former rebels contend that the Islamists have successfully exploited the country’s power vacuum, infusing the conflict with religion and criticizing those not considered sufficiently pious, including women who do not wear the head scarf.

Viewing Qaddafi's Body

As a form of celebration, camels were slaughtered

BLOODTHIRSTY PIETY

Wanted: an Atheist roommate
Weird but true
By KATHIANNE BONIELLO
POST WIRE SERVICES: October 23, 2011

A Washington state woman will probably be more careful about whom she takes in as a roommate after her last one kidnapped her young sons because he believed the home was “infested with demons."

Shane Soares allegedly grabbed the 3- and 4-year-old boys from their beds after midnight one day last week. When he was caught, he told Grant County sheriff’s deputies that “the Lord told him” to do it, police said.

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At Front of Brooklyn Bus, a Clash of Religious and Women’s Rights
By CHRISTINE HAUGHNEY
The New York Times: October 19, 2011

It does not take long to recognize that the B110 bus in Brooklyn is not like others in the city.

The exterior colors are different: red, white and blue. The price for a single ride is the same, $2.50, but MetroCards are not accepted. The bus does not run Friday night or most of Saturday.

But the most obvious sign that the B110 is different was demonstrated Wednesday by Gitty Green, a 30-year-old mother who boarded the bus on Wednesday with her three children and a stroller and headed straight to the back.

As her two older sons perched on the seats behind her, she looked ahead at the men seated in front, mostly Hasidic Jews in wide-brimmed hats, and said, because her religion dictates the separation of the sexes, she never wondered what it would be like to sit with them.

“It’s such a normal thing for us that women and men are separate,” she said. “Most of the ladies go to the back.”

The B110 bus, which runs between Williamsburg and Borough Park, has been run by Private Transportation Corporation since 1973, under a franchise with the city. And to many in the area, the bus’s tradition of separation comes with little surprise or indignation.

But this week, the bus’s practices gained widespread publicity after The New York World, a Columbia Journalism School publication, reported that a female rider was told by other riders that she had to leave the front. The story was quickly picked up by bloggers and even came to the attention of Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg.

Speaking at a news conference on Wednesday, the mayor said that segregating men and women was “obviously not permitted” on public buses. “Private people: you can have a private bus,” he added. “Go rent a bus, and do what you want on it.”

A male photographer found it difficult to visit the back of the bus, filled with Hasidic riders loaded down with packages and the scent of freshly baked bread before the Jewish holiday Shemini Atzeret. The bus driver told him that only women were allowed there.

Guidelines, posted in the front and the back, said that “when boarding a crowded bus with standing passengers in the front, women should board the back door after paying the driver in the front” and that “when the bus is crowded, passengers should stand in their designated areas.”

The women riding in the back included several full-time mothers and an accountant who commutes into Manhattan each day. One woman who would identify herself only by her initials, M. M., said other buses that cater to the Hasidic community sometimes separate men and women by having one sex sit on the left and the other on the right. She said women could not sit in the front and men sit in the back because “they’re not allowed to see the women.” But she acknowledged that the B110 bus was not just for members of the Hasidic community and other Orthodox Jews.

While no male passengers sitting at the front of the bus explicitly told a female reporter to move, several riders said women did not belong there. One father who sat in the front with his son and daughter and declined to give his name said men and women “need to be separated.” He looked down at his daughter dressed in a bright red raincoat, with her blue eyes frozen in amazement, and said: “She’s small. When she’s big, she will sit in the back.”

Even if the buses allow women to sit in the front, it may take longer for male riders to feel comfortable. As Asaf Amitay, a 35-year-old regular rider on the bus, rode home to Borough Park, he made it clear that he did not believe that women should be seated in the front.

“I don’t like it,” he said. “The women is in the back. The men are in the front.”

ROSA PARKS, ANYONE?

Top to bottom:
Sam Mullet, Lester Mullet, Johnny Mullet, Levi Miller

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Amish Renegades Are Accused in Bizarre Attacks on Their Peers
By ERIK ECKHOLM and DANIEL LOVERING
The New York Times: October 17, 2011

BERGHOLZ, Ohio — Myron Miller and his wife, Arlene, had been asleep for an hour when their 15-year-old daughter woke them and said that people were knocking at the door.

Mr. Miller, 45, a stocky construction worker and an Amish bishop in the peaceful farmlands of eastern Ohio, found five or six men waiting. Some grabbed him and wrestled him outside as others hacked at his long black beard with scissors, clipping off six inches. As Mr. Miller kept struggling, his wife screamed at the children to call 911, and the attackers fled.

For an Amish man, it was an unthinkable personal violation, and all the more bewildering because those accused in the attack are other Amish.

The attackers, the authorities said, had traveled from an isolated splinter settlement near Bergholz, south of the Miller residence. Sheriffs and Amish leaders in the region, home to one of the country’s largest concentrations of Amish, had come to expect trouble from the Bergholz group. It is said to be led with an iron hand by Sam Mullet, a prickly 66-year-old man who had become bitterly estranged from mainstream Amish communities and had had several confrontations with the Jefferson County sheriff.

But the violent humiliation that men from his group are charged with inflicting on their perceived enemies throughout this fall, using scissors and battery-operated clippers, came as a bizarre shock.

The assaults — four are known to the authorities — have stirred fear among the Amish and resulted in the arrests, so far, of five men, including three of Mr. Mullet’s sons, on kidnapping and other charges. Officials say that more arrests are possible.

In the first incident, on Sept. 6 in the town of Mesopotamia, a married couple who had left the Bergholz community four years ago, Martin and Barbara Miller, were attacked at night by five of their own sons and a son-in law, along with their wives, all of whom had elected to remain with Mr. Mullet, according to the victims. The gang left the father with a “ragged beard,” as a sheriff’s report described it, then turned on their mother — who is Mr. Mullet’s sister — and chopped off large patches of her hair.

“The beard is a key symbol of masculine Amish identity,” said Donald B. Kraybill, a sociologist and expert on the Amish at Elizabethtown College in Pennsylvania. The women view their long hair, kept in a bun, as their “glory,” Dr. Kraybill said, and shearing it was “an attack on her personal identity and religious teaching.”

Our Amish, Ourselves
By JOE MACKALL
The New York Times: October 20, 2011

Ashland, Ohio — BY the time I made my way to Mr. Stutzman’s farm to ask for his take on the renegade Amish of Bergholz, Ohio — a splinter group that includes several members recently arrested after participating in assaults on other Amish — I was too late to break the news. I knew I would be. Several of my fellow English (that is, non-Amish) residents of Ashland County had been to see Mr. Stutzman earlier that morning. All were eager to tell him of yet another Amish incident. And this was the best kind — a case of Amish-on-Amish violence.

English always stop by Mr. Stutzman’s place with news of the outside world, especially if the news reveals Amish indiscretion, or worse. A few years ago an Amish man in an adjacent county was sent to prison for sexually abusing his daughters. Traffic at Mr. Stutzman’s produce stand was heavy that day, he told me. Folks he’d never seen before stopped by to pick up a head of lettuce or a bushel of peppers. They stared hard into his face as they asked if he’d heard about the abuse. Springing bad news on our Amish neighbors is just something we do around here.

I live surrounded by the Swartzentruber Amish, widely considered the most conservative of all Amish. Around here, people seem either to love or hate them. Unlike those parts of America without large Amish populations that tend to romanticize the community, here things take on a more fundamental, some might even say practical, prejudice.

Around here people love to poke holes in the fabric of Amish solidarity.

The assaults and arrests in Bergholz seem to fit a convenient narrative for people seeking to discredit the Amish. There’s evidence of a doctrinal split, which is as common in the community as straw hats and hay wagons. Schisms and splinter groups are prevalent among the Amish that I know. Mr. Stutzman’s neighbor, Mr. Gingerich, also a Swartzentruber, recently broke off from Mr. Stutzman’s group over the issue of adding a second lantern to buggies. Mr. Gingerich is set to move to Maine later this month to start his own settlement.

All Amish seem to fall into the trap of believing their way is the true Amish way. So it comes as no surprise that the attacks in Bergholz, which included the forced cutting of hair, were the work of a splinter group that believed somebody had betrayed the true cause, if the attacks can be credited with such lofty motives.

Whatever the case, I know a few things for certain. The Swartzentruber Amish will continue taking baths only on Saturdays, believing this deliberate inattention to hygiene is evidence of living the true Amish way. I know that there will always be splits and schisms among the Amish. I know that many of the rural English of Ashland County will continue to dislike the Amish in general, even while maintaining genuine friendships with a few. I know that many Americans will continue to see the Amish as a backward cult of religious fanatics, but that many more will persist in mythologizing them, seeing in them what they need to see. I know that, as the writer Wendell Berry says, America’s view of the Amish is a “perfect blindness.”

Joe Mackall, a professor of English and creative writing at Ashland University, is the author of “Plain Secrets: An Outsider Among the Amish.”

 

 

 

 

 

Broadcast of an Animated Film Roils Tunisia Before Elections
By DAVID D. KIRKPATRICK
The New York Times: October 17, 2011

TUNIS — In the final week of the first election campaign of the Arab Spring, political discourse here in Tunisia has been all but consumed by contention over the television broadcast of an animated film, “Persepolis,” which touched off accusations of heresy and censorship.

The episode began when a relatively small group of ultraconservative Islamists attacked the television station that had broadcast the 2007 film, about a Muslim girl growing up in post-revolutionary Iran, because of a scene in which she rails at God. He is depicted as she imagines him, violating an Islamic injunction against personifying him.

But it soon became clear that ultraconservatives were hardly the only ones offended. The broadcast has touched a nerve among a far broader section of Tunisia’s Muslims, even in the coastal regions where many pride themselves on their cosmopolitanism. “It is true we do not all fast, and we do not all pray,” said Saleh Mohamed Khoudi, 53, a director of technology at a private company. “But this is too much.”

Semiha Sehli, 33, who works in finance, said she wanted nothing to do with the Islamists and did not trust Ennahda. But even she was shocked when she saw the offending scene on Facebook. Sure, she acknowledged, all little children imagine a personified God. “You can imagine it, but you shouldn’t put it in a movie,” she said.

The liberal standard-bearer, the Progressive Democratic Party, sometimes known here as the Western party, raced to distance itself from the film. “We are against blasphemy,” said Ahmed Bouazzi, a member of the party’s executive committee. “And we respect the freedom of expression, freedom of speech, freedom of creativity. And we are against violence.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

“Seven Words You Can Never Say On Television”

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Local Pastor: Comedian Carlin Said Too Many ‘Dirty Words’
To Get Street Name
Head Of Corpus Christi Church In Morningside Heights Frowns On Legend's Act
CBSNewYork: October 10, 2011

NEW YORK — There is a controversy brewing in Morningside Heights over renaming a street in honor of the late comedian George Carlin.

The local Catholic priest says it dishonors his church.

The late Carlin was a thinking man’s comedian and so some here where he grew up think it’s fitting to rename a stretch of 121st Street, between Broadway and Amsterdam, in his honor.

However, the pastor at the Catholic church and school Carlin attended says otherwise.

“Certainly he made his early work a mockery of this particular place — certainly a lot of people by name,” said Pastor Raymond Rafferty of Corpus Christi Church.

Rafferty said he does not want his school children, who would read Carlin’s name on a street sign directly across the street, to be exposed to his often profane brand of humor. “He also was an extremely vulgar person,” Rafferty said.

Carlin’s 1972 monologue “Seven dirty words you can never say on television” set new standards. Not only did Carlin’s seven dirty words make comedy history, they made legal history.

Broadcast in 1973 by New York radio station WBAI, the routine made it all the way to the Supreme Court, which in 1978 effectively established the regulation of indecency in American broadcasting.

Indecent or not, many here say Carlin deserves the honor.

“George Carlin in another way spoke with an angry but very precise voice,” graduate student Rosalind Gnatt said.

“God always said you have free will. So George had some free will — voiced his opinion,” educator Tom Gilmore added.

“If overall he did more good than not good, then I see no harm in having a street named after him,” education administrator Fred Schnur said.

Rafferty is not having it. “My response to that? It would be fine, but not on this street,” he said. Rafferty said putting it here would be a slap in the face of the church.

The community board promises not to make a decision on renaming the street until it officially hears the church’s position in a public meeting.

(Full text)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

In Georgia, a Lawsuit Over Guns in Church
THE ASSOCIATED PRESS : October 8, 2011

The United States Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit, in Atlanta, heard arguments last week on a lawsuit brought by a central Georgia church and the gun rights group GeorgiaCarry.org claiming that a state law banning firearms in places of worship violates their constitutionally protected religious freedoms.

State lawyers said it was a small price to pay to allow others to pray without fearing for their safety. The panel of judges roundly criticized the suit after hearing arguments but did not immediately make a ruling.

Georgia is one of a handful of states with such restrictions — court papers say Arkansas, Mississippi and North Dakota have adopted similar laws — and court observers, religious leaders and Second Amendment groups are closely watching this case.

The lawsuit was brought on behalf of the Baptist Tabernacle of Thomaston, where the Rev. Jonathan Wilkins said he wanted to have a gun for protection while working in the church office. The judges also questioned how banning firearms in a place of worship violates religious freedoms.

The lawsuit involves a longstanding fight between gun owners and state lawmakers over where firearms should be allowed. Most advocates for gun owners cheered in 2010 when Georgia lawmakers lifted restrictions that had long banned them from taking weapons to public gatherings.

But the overhaul left intact restrictions that banned guns from government buildings, courthouses, jails and prisons, state mental health facilities, nuclear plants and houses of worship. It also restricted owners from taking weapons into bars without permission from the owner.

Critics of the law argue that churches should not be included in the restrictions.

“We’re not trying to force churches to allow guns in their sanctuary,” said Kelly Kennett, a gun owner and president of GeorgiaCarry.org. “Churches should be treated like any other private property owner. Why are you treating people at churches differently than how you’d be treated at a store, at a bank, at a club?”

Then, let them pay TAXES.

PRAYER

Nepalese devotees lead a buffalo to sacrifice at the Dashain festival, Katmandu

Devotee of Jui Tui shrine, Phuket l

Ultra-Orthodox Jew prepares to slaughter a chicken in Kaparot ritual, Tel Aviv

BASHAR ABDULLAHI NUR

Suicide Bomber Opposed Secular Studies
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS: October 6, 2011

Somalia - The suicide bomber who killed more than 100 people, including students seeking scholarships, in an attack near the Education Ministry on Tuesday was a dropout who had declared that young people should forget about secular education and instead wage jihad. The bomber, Bashar Abdullahi Nur, had given an interview before the attack, later broadcast on a militant-run radio station, saying that college students who study abroad “never think about the harassed Muslims.”

(Full text)

KLINGONS FOR CHRIST

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

MAUREEN DOWD

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Cooperation in Evil
By MAUREEN DOWD, OP-ED COLUMNIST
The New York Times: October 1, 2011

WASHINGTON - MAYBE it’s the Mario Lanza in him. But Nino Scalia relishes being operatically imprudent.

The Supreme Court justice’s latest supreme lapse of judgment involves poking his nose in a local legal wrangle about the place where I slept for four years: the Catholic University dorms.

In a speech last weekend at Duquesne University Law School, a Catholic institution in Pittsburgh, Justice Scalia defended religion in public life.

“Our educational establishment these days, while so tolerant of and even insistent on diversity in all other aspects of life, seems bent on eliminating the diversity of moral judgment, particularly moral judgment based on religious views,” the devout Catholic said.

As an example, he cited the lawsuit filed by the “notoriously litigious” George Washington University law professor John Banzhaf (left) against Catholic U.’s new ban on coed dorms.

In June, the president of Catholic U., John Garvey (right), wrote an op-ed piece in The Wall Street Journal explaining why, as a father of five, he felt the need to resort to a “countercultural” and “slightly old-fashioned remedy,” ending 25 years of coed dorms. He said he believed single-sex dorms would “improve the practice of virtue,” reducing binge drinking and “the culture of hooking up.”

Using a formula that’s the inverse of “Sex and the City,” Garvey wrote: “Rates of depression reach 20 percent for young women who have had two or more sexual partners in the last year, almost double the rate for women who have had none. Sexually active young men do more poorly than abstainers in their academic work.”

He made note of the sad slide from proud feminism to proud sluttiness. “I would have thought that young women would have a civilizing influence on young men,” he wrote. “Yet the causal arrow seems to run the other way.”

Banzhaf, who calls Garvey’s arguments “totally secular,” pronounced himself “astonished that a justice of the nation’s highest court would single out and prejudge a legal proceeding which could set an important precedent, and could one day even come before the U.S. Supreme Court.”

As the Supreme Court gets ready to go into session on Monday, its six Catholic justices were set to merge church and state by attending the traditional first-Sunday-in-October Red Mass at St. Matthew’s Cathedral. (It’s hard to believe there’s no Protestant on the Supreme Court.) Through the years, the presiding clergy have aimed their homilies against abortion, gay marriage and “humanism.” Justices of other faiths have attended; but as Dahlia Lithwick wrote in Slate, “Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg (right) stopped attending the Red Mass altogether after hearing her very first homily, which she has described as ‘outrageously anti-abortion.’”

In 2007, there was a kerfuffle about Catholic dominance on the court because the five justices who pushed to uphold the ban on “partial-birth abortion” were all Catholic men appointed by conservative presidents.

The church has aggressively meddled in politics on abortion, trying to defeat candidates who support abortion rights and prevent some liberal politicians from receiving Communion. But American bishops have been inconsistent in preaching their values.

They do not try to bring down politicians who supported the Iraq war, even though Pope John Paul II spoke out against it and sent a Vatican cardinal to warn W. that the war would be a “disaster” that would “destroy human life.” They do not express outrage at Republican audiences that cheer for executions, or target pols who brag on the death penalty, even though John Paul issued an encyclical against “the culture of death,” saying modern states have so many ways to protect citizens that the necessity for executions is “very rare, if not practically nonexistent.”

Scalia, confident in his own infallibility, dissented. As he wrote in a religious journal in 2002, he does not find the death penalty immoral, and he believes that as the “minister of God,” government has powers to get “revenge” and “execute wrath.” He’s clearly more an Old Testament guy than New, or he would know that some prisoners get falsely accused and nailed to the cross (Matthew 26:59-66).

Now Scalia has dissented from the opinion of a second pope on the issue. Pope Benedict sent Georgia state officials a letter last month asking for clemency for Troy Davis (left), but the very Catholic Supreme Court denied a last-minute stay of execution.

In his Duquesne speech, Scalia said: “If I thought that Catholic doctrine held the death penalty to be immoral, I would resign. I could not be a part of a system that imposes it.”

My family priest, Father Kevin O’Neil, teaches about “cooperation in evil” in Catholic moral theology. If you facilitate something that has been deemed wrong, like taking a human life, are you cooperating in evil?

Maybe the Supreme Court should ask itself that question.

Are you “cooperating in evil,” Justice Scalia?

(Full text)

Rights Collide as Town Clerk Sidesteps Role in Gay Marriages
By THOMAS KAPLAN
The New York Times: September 27, 2011

LEDYARD, N.Y. — Rose Marie Belforti is a 57-year-old cheese maker, the elected town clerk in this sprawling Finger Lakes farming community and a self-described Bible-believing Christian. She believes that God has condemned homosexuality as a sin, so she does not want to sign same-sex marriage licenses; instead, she has arranged for a deputy to issue all marriage licenses by appointment.

But when a lesbian couple who own a farm near here showed up at the town hall last month, the women said they were unwilling to wait.

Now Ms. Belforti is at the heart of an emerging test case, as national advocacy groups look to Ledyard for an answer to how the state balances a religious freedom claim by a local official against a civil rights claim by a same-sex couple.

Ms. Belforti, represented by a Christian legal advocacy group based in Arizona, the Alliance Defense Fund, is arguing that state law requires New York to accommodate her religious beliefs.

“New York law protects my right to hold both my job and my beliefs,” she said in an interview last week, pausing briefly to collect $50 from a resident planning to take 20 loads of refuse to the town dump. “I’m not supposed to have to leave my beliefs at the door at my government job.”

But the couple, Deirdre DiBiaggio and Katie Carmichael of Miami, are arguing that the law requires all clerks in New York to provide marriage licenses to same-sex couples.

The couple are being represented by a liberal advocacy organization, People for the American Way, based in Washington.

Saudi Arabia: 10 Lashes for Driving
By LIAM STACK
Published: September 27, 2011

Two days after King Abdullah (right with Pope Benedict} granted women the right to vote and run for public office, starting in 2015, a court on Tuesday sentenced a woman to 10 lashes for violating religious rules prohibiting women in the kingdom from driving, activists and local news media said. The woman, Shaimaa Ghassaneya, was found guilty of driving in Jidda in July. Her sentence was unusually severe for the crime, which typically results in several days of detention. Activists said she planned to appeal. More women have been encouraged to violate the driving ban in recent months, as part of the social media-driven Women2Drive campaign. At least two more were expected to stand trial in the coming months.

(Full article)

PAMELA GELLER

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

‘Mideast’ battle on subways
By JENNIFER FERMINO
New York Post: September 21, 2011

A holy war is brewing on the city’s subways.

An controversial activist -- incensed at a slew of underground billboards denigrating Israel -- is threatening to sue the MTA if it doesn’t run her counter-ads likening enemies of the Jewish state to “savages.”

“This is an absolute free-speech issue,” said Pamela Geller. “We’re preparing the paperwork as we speak.”

Her inflammatory ad was sent to the MTA a week ago, but she has yet to receive a response. From past experience, Geller -- co-founder of the American Freedom Defense Initiative -- said it usually takes a matter of hours for approval. But this isn’t just any advertisement.

“In any war between the civilized man and the savage, support the civilized man,” the ad states. “Support Israel. Defeat Jihad.”

The ad is meant as a response to more than a dozen subway-stations anti-Israel billboards put up in by a group called WESPACK since the beginning of the month.

Those ads feature pictures of smiling children with the message, “We are on the side of peace and justice. End US military aid to Israel.”
A less controversial rebuttal to those ads has already been approved by the MTA.

On Monday, the group Stand With Us will begin running its ads reading, “Israel Needs a Partner for Peace.”

The MTA declined comment.

WESPACK ( 'anti-Israel' billboard) ADS
PAMELA GELLER / AMERICAN FREEDOM DEFENSE INITIATIVE ADS

(Full text)

SEPTEMBER 11, 2001

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Omitting Clergy at 9/11 Ceremony Prompts Protest
By LAURIE GOODSTEIN
The New York Times: September 8, 2011

The second Sunday after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, New York clergy members of many faiths joined elected officials at Yankee Stadium in a city-sponsored memorial ceremony that melded the sacred and the secular, replete with flags, prayers and tears.

Ten years later, any consensus that existed about the appropriate role of religion in public ceremonies marking a monumental American trauma has fallen apart.

Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg has come under attack by some religious and political leaders for not including clergy members as speakers at Sunday’s official ceremony at ground zero on the 10th anniversary of the attacks.

Richard D. Land (left), president of the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission, which is the public policy arm of the Southern Baptist Convention, said in an interview that the planned ceremony only proved that New York was the “epicenter of secularism,” out of step with the rest of America.

“We’re not France,” he said. “Mr. Bloomberg is pretending we’re a secular society, and we are not.”

Congressman Randy Forbes (right), a Republican representative from Virginia and a co-chairman of the Congressional Prayer Caucus, sent Mr. Bloomberg a letter on behalf of the caucus members urging him to include prayer in the ceremony.

At the same time, some evangelical Christian leaders said they were outraged that an interfaith prayer service planned by the Washington National Cathedral did not include a Southern Baptist or other evangelical minister.

“In miniature, this is what’s happening to the whole country,” said Alan Wolfe (left), director of the Boisi Center for Religion and American Public Life at Boston College. “9/11 was this moment that we came together, and it lasted about three-and-a-half minutes. The country went from a brief moment of something like unity, to complete Balkanization, and now we’re seeing it in religion and in politics, like in everything else.”

In a nation of unprecedented religious diversity, the United States once managed to navigate religion in public life with relatively generic acknowledgments of the sacred — a tradition often referred to as civil religion.

Ten years ago, the event at Yankee Stadium and a prayer service at Washington National Cathedral attended by President George W. Bush were conducted in that tradition, and they were held with no controversy to speak of. But now, Professor Wolfe said, “the civil religion, those informal kinds of agreements, can’t work if everyone is going to be litigious.”

“The structure for this program was designed 10 years ago, with the consultation of a lot of families of those who died, and it is primarily for the families,” Stu Loeser (right), Mr. Bloomberg’s press secretary, said.

It is wrong to say the ceremony excludes prayer or clergy members, Mr. Loeser said. Chaplains for the Fire and Police Departments and the Port Authority police often attend, and “we think most people use those moments of silence for reflection and prayer,” he said.

But these explanations have not prevented the controversy from becoming a galvanizing issue for conservative religious groups and media outlets and Christian talk radio.

On Thursday, the Family Research Council, a conservative Christian lobbying group in Washington, and City Councilman Fernando Cabrera (left), who is a pastor in the Bronx, delivered what they said were 62,000 petition signatures to Mr. Bloomberg’s office calling on him to include clergy members in the ceremony.

The parallel controversy over the interfaith prayer service in Washington proves that it is difficult to avoid criticism even when religious leaders are included in a public ceremony.

The controversy was fueled this week on Fox News when Gretchen Carlson (left), co-host of “Fox and Friends,” said that because of “political correctness,” the cathedral had included “fringe groups” like Buddhist nuns in the prayer service, but not Baptists.

“We’re going to have a Buddhist nun, which we didn’t even know existed,” she said.

Underlying the Washington debate is the divide between mainline and evangelical Protestants. The cathedral is the seat of the Episcopal Diocese of Washington, and some conservative evangelical figures say they are uncomfortable that the cathedral is often the site of major events in the national spotlight.

GROUND ZERO
2001 ~ 2011

Ban On Clergy-Led Prayer At 9/11 Anniversary Draws Criticism
CBSNewYork/AP: September 2, 2011

NEW YORK — Christian conservatives are condemning Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s decision to bar clergy-led prayer at the 10th anniversary commemoration of the terrorist attacks, calling the program an insult. Others wonder whether the mayor is trying to dodge the potentially thorny issue of including a Muslim representative.

The mayor’s office says the annual event focuses on relatives of Sept. 11 victims and has never included clergy invocations. Bloomberg has said it would be impossible to include everyone who would like to participate.

Evelyn Erskine, a Bloomberg spokeswoman, said the program was designed in coordination with 9/11 families and included readings that were “spiritual and personal in nature.”

Six moments of silence were planned for personal reflection and prayer.

Police and fire chaplains who work with the 9/11 families will attend.

“Rather than have disagreements over which religious leaders participate, we would like to keep the focus of our commemoration ceremony on the family members of those who died,” Erskine said.

“I just think a decision was made to give priority to the families. If this means more families will be attending, I think all of us can accept that,” said Rabbi Joseph Potasnik, executive vice president of the New York Board of Rabbis.

Critics including the Catholic League and the Family Research Council, argue the program reflects prejudice against religion and ignores the central role religious groups played in the city’s 9/11 response.

“Nobody was turning religious leaders away from the scene 10 years ago. Why are they being banned from the 10th anniversary?” said the Rev. Richard Land, who leads the public policy arm of the Southern Baptist Convention. “The only answer pure and simple is anti-religious prejudice.”

Bill Donohue (left), head of the Catholic League, said the Bloomberg administration seems to be arguing that clergy would detract from the event. The Washington-based Family Research Council, a conservative Christian public policy group, has posted a petition demanding Bloomberg reverse his decision. The American Family Association, based in Tupelo, Miss., whose policy director [Bryan Fischer - right] argues that freedom of religion applies only to Christians [and claims that, not only was Adolf Hitler gay, but all his “Brownshirts” were too], called the exclusion of prayer an insult to “the faith of Americans and indeed to God himself.”

REP. MICHAEL GRIMM
(R-NY)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

S.I. Congressman Wants WTC Steel Cross To Be National Monument
CBSNewYork/AP: September 6, 2011

NEW YORK — A Staten Island congressman has proposed legislation that would make the Sept. 11 cross-shaped steel beam a national monument. Rep. Michael Grimm said he was pushing for protective status for the 20-foot steel cross that was found amid the ruins of the World Trade Center site.

“The focus and goal of my legislation will be to make the cross a national monument. Therefore, once and for all, putting an end to whether the cross should be part of 9/11, whether it shouldn’t,” Grimm told 1010 WINS.

The proposed legislation was in response to a lawsuit filed by the American Atheists, according to Grimm. The group argues that a “Christian icon” should not be included in the 9/11 memorial museum, slated to open next year.

Grimm called the group’s opposition reprehensible and said the cross was “so much more than a symbol of Christianity.”

"When fascism comes to America it will be wrapped in a flag and carrying a cross."
~ SINCLAIR LEWIS

. . . a GRIMM prediction.

SHIRLEY PHELPS
Fashion Statement

Westboro Baptist Church to protest Fashion Week
By TODD VENEZIA, EMILY SMITH and AMBER SUTHERLAND
The New York Post: September 9, 2011

Fashion Week supermodels are the height of style and elegance -- but to the vile Westboro Baptist Church, they’re nothing but “sluts” and “proud whores.”

The crazed Kansas religious sect -- infamous for their heinous protests of military funerals -- is planning to rally tomorrow outside the tents at Lincoln Center to decry what they call fashion’s “Slutwalk extraordinaire.”

A spokesman for the Fred Phelps(right)-led “church” vowed yesterday to bring so much hate to Fashion Week that fashionistas will think John Galliano is in town.

“The whole thing is vanity!” roared Westboro mouthpiece Steve Drain (left). “You’re going to teach the women, especially the young women of this country, to doll themselves up ... All you are doing is teaching girls to be proud whores!”

He said the sect believes “the whole idea [of the] fashion industry is to make women look as whorish as possible and men look as effeminate at possible.”

Drain even offered up a little Bible-thumping fashion advice.
“Put some jeans on and fear God,” he told New Yorkers. “Forget about all this fashion nonsense.”

Drain also said the church would continue its relentless vile attacks on the gay community.

A recent Supreme Court ruling upheld their right to hold such demonstrations as protected by the First Amendment.

“The fashion industry is dominated by fags and fag enablers,” Drain said. “So we’ll preach to them.”

The Fashion Week visit will be by far the least offensive part of the church’s weekend in New York. They also plan to protest at several 9/11 memorial events on Sunday.

14 Are Killed in Muslim-Christian Fighting
REUTERS: September 6, 2011

Nigeria - At least 14 people have been killed in violence between Christian and Muslim youths in central Nigeria’s volatile Plateau State since Sunday night, the authorities said. With the latest deaths, at least 50 people have been killed in the ethnically and religiously mixed area in the last week. The authorities said the violence began when Christian youths attacked some Muslims as they gathered to celebrate the end of Ramadan in Jos, the capital of Plateau State. Plateau State straddles Nigeria’s mostly Muslim north and largely Christian south.

(Full text)

Officials Issue Warning Over Water Fights
THE ASSOCIATED PRESS: September 5, 2011

Iran - Iranian officials warned Monday that “counterrevolutionaries” from abroad were behind the flash mobs of young people who have been holding boisterous water gun fights in public parks across the country. Gen. Ahmad Radan, the acting Iranian police commander, was quoted in newspapers on Monday as saying that a number of people were arrested at an Tehran park on Friday, and he vowed that police would act to prevent future water fights. Hard-liners see the water fights as unseemly and immoral, breaking taboos against the social mixing of men and women, and they worry that the gatherings could weaken adherence to Iran’s cleric-led Islamic rule or even build into outright protests against the ruling system.

(Full text)

DENIS MAMADOU CUSPERT

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Park’s Rules on Scarves Are Cited in a Melee
By ELIZABETH A. HARRIS and JOSEPH GOLDSTEIN
The New York Times: August 31, 2011

A scuffle broke out at an amusement park in Westchester County on Tuesday when a group of Muslims there to celebrate the end of Ramadan were told that women could not wear their head coverings on certain rides, park officials and witnesses said. Fifteen people were arrested.

The Muslim American Society of New York had arranged the trip to Playland Park in Rye, which was expected to bring some 3,000 people to the site from New York City, as well as surrounding suburbs like Yonkers and parts of Long Island.

About 2:30 p.m., the day took a sour turn when some of the female Muslim visitors, most of whom arrived in head scarves, were told they could not get on certain rides — including the Catch-a-Wave ride, the Crazy Mouse roller coaster and the Dragon Coaster (left) — because their heads were covered by the Muslim hijab.

Ola Salem, 17, of Coney Island, Brooklyn, was visiting with the group and wearing a pink and gray head scarf. She said she asked a park employee if she could join her 8-year-old sister on a ride.

“They said no because my of my ‘headgear,’ “ Ms. Salem said.

“I said, ‘It’s not my headgear, it’s my religion.’"

Ms. Salem said she asked to speak with a supervisor and was presented with a list of rides that would require her to remove her scarf. More than a dozen of the park’s rides, she said, were on the list.

According to park officials, disappointed customers were then offered a refund, and several people proceeded to the park’s main entrance to get back the $20 each member of the group had paid.

Then, the Parks Department said, about 20 members of the Muslim American group started fighting among themselves, there was pushing and shoving, so some park rangers intervened.

Some people who came to the park with the group said the fight began when a park employee touched a Muslim woman, at which point tempers flared. “We don’t have any knowledge of that at all from the police end or from the parks end,” said Peter Tartaglia, the deputy commissioner of the Parks Department.

County officials say that the ban on headgear [of any sorts] for some rides is a longstanding safety policy and that the organizers had been warned about it [and] blamed the trip’s organizers for not informing the guests that they would have to remove their headscarves.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

A Family’s Wishes
EDITORIAL
The New York Times: September 8, 2011

Four years ago, the Bush administration issued a regulation to protect families of veterans distressed by the intrusion of volunteer honor guards offering unsolicited prayers and recitations at national cemetery funeral rites. The administration chose the only sensible course, directing that the family of the deceased — “and only they” — would identify any text to be read, not outside groups, however much they invoked God and country.

That regulation is being challenged in the Texas courts by some honor guards and a conservative legal group, the Liberty Institute. They have backed it up with a video and propaganda assault via the Internet against President Obama, not Mr. Bush. They claim, falsely, that the Obama administration has banned the mention of God and decreed “Jesus is not welcome” at veterans’ burials.

The truth is that all manner of ritual — from religious to secular — is being honored by the Department of Veterans Affairs, but only according to each family’s preference. Yet the lawsuit oddly invokes religious freedom in challenging the Houston National Cemetery’s attempt to follow policy.

The Veterans Affairs procedure under the regulation is to have funeral directors tell families that volunteer honor guards are available for services but that they are free to decline. Other veterans groups do not quarrel with this, as James Dao reported in The Times.

No one denies that honor guard volunteers, marching as dedicated veterans themselves, have offered great comfort to many families over the years. But the honor guards enjoy no claim to primacy at graveside. The wishes of a grieving family should never be overridden by outsiders, however well intentioned.

• • •
Final Resting Place, and Battleground
By JAMES DAO
The New York Times: August 30, 2011

Every week, thousands of veterans are buried at national cemeteries, often to the sorrowful sound of a bugle. Yet even for families that quietly mourn their dead, these can be the most public of private affairs, taking on deep meaning — about politics, war and religion — to others, particularly other veterans.

So it is that in Houston, with one of the nation’s busiest national cemeteries, controversy exploded when the new cemetery director began enforcing a little-noticed 2007 policy that prohibits volunteer honor guards from reading recitations — including religious ones — in their funeral rituals, unless families specifically request them.

The new enforcement outraged members of local veterans organizations who have long infused their ceremonies with references to God. This summer, they filed a lawsuit against the Department of Veterans Affairs that has turned the national cemetery into a battleground over the role of prayer in veterans’ burials.

The plaintiffs, aided by a conservative legal group, the Liberty Institute, contend they should be allowed to use a Veterans of Foreign Wars script dating from World War I that refers to the deceased as “a brave man” with an “abiding faith in God” and that seeks comfort from an “almighty and merciful God.” The institute has publicized the dispute nationwide with slick videos and a Web site declaring that “Jesus is not welcome at gravesides.”

The lawsuit, which alleges religious discrimination by the government, and the videos have generated angry letters and Internet commentary against the Department of Veterans Affairs, as well as demands from members of the Texas Congressional delegation, mostly Republicans, that the Obama administration fire the Houston cemetery director, Arleen Ocasio.

Department of Veterans Affairs officials say that the original policy, enacted under President George W. Bush, resulted from complaints about religious words or icons being inserted unrequested into veterans’ funerals. They noted that active-duty military honor guards, including the teams that do funerals at Arlington National Cemetery, say almost nothing during their ceremonies.

“We do what the families wish,” said Steve L. Muro, the under secretary for memorial affairs. “I always tell my employees we have just one chance to get it right.”

“The message was that the people in Houston should not do this V.F.W. ritual uninvited, and they did not want to hear that,” said Jim Strickland (right), a Vietnam-era veteran who runs a blog called VAWatchdogtoday.org.

Yes, He Sold Fakes. They Are Supposed to Be Fake
By JEFFREY E. SINGER and COREY KILGANNON
The New York Times: August 24, 2011

The items, mostly copies of luxury objects, inside the little shop in downtown Manhattan are made of thin cardboard and might not even pass muster deep in the background of a movie set.

But that did not deter the police from arresting a shop worker on counterfeiting charges for selling several items, including Louis Vuitton and Burberry handbags.

There is just one problem: the items are supposed to be fake.

The store, Fook On Sing Funeral Supplies, on Mulberry Street along what is known in Chinatown as Funeral Row, sells traditional objects of mourning, mostly copies of luxury objects. The items are made of cardboard, paper and plastic, to be used at funerals as symbolic gifts for the deceased. The cardboard models are burned as part of traditional Chinese funeral practices.

The store sells a cardboard mansion for $400 and a cardboard flat-screen television for $40. There are stacks of money ($10,000 bills) for sale, as well as miniature sports cars, cellphones, double-breasted suits and even smiling dolls to act as servants in the hereafter.

“When people die, they feel they are going to need things in the next world,” explained one of the store’s owners, Amy Mak-Chan, who is the arrested man’s aunt. “They might want a car and a house and other nice things. People buy these things here, to give them as gifts at the funeral.”

Rabbi Fabricated Swashbuckling Tales of Saving Holocaust Torahs
By JAMES BARRON
The New York Times: August 24, 2011

He described himself as a risk-taking rabbi who had been “beaten up, thrown in jail and gone $175,000 into debt” on “expeditions” to Eastern Europe. He said his mission was to rescue and restore Torahs that had been “wrenched from their communities during the Holocaust” and place them with congregations that would look after them.

“I guess you could call me the Jewish Indiana Jones,” he wrote in 2004.

But on Wednesday, the rabbi, Menachem Youlus, was arrested in Manhattan on fraud charges. Court papers said he had never gone to the far-flung places he talked about and had made up the stories he told about discovering Torahs at the sites of the Auschwitz and Bergen-Belsen concentration camps — or in Iraq in 2007.

Instead, prosecutors accused him of selling fake Torahs and pocketing hundreds of thousands of dollars through Save a Torah, the nonprofit organization he co-founded in 2004. A postal inspector who investigated Rabbi Youlus’s dealings also challenged his tale of financial troubles, saying in court papers that the rabbi had never been deeply in debt.

The postal inspector, Greg Ghiozzi, said that Rabbi Youlus had taken more than $340,000 of the $1.2 million collected by the charity, including at least $145,000 he had diverted into his own bank account. Mr. Ghiozzi spelled out how Rabbi Youlus had used the money to pay for private school tuition for his children and for personal expenses, including meals and health care.

Some Very Good Sense
EDITORIAL
The New York Times: August 19, 2011

Gov. Chris Christie of New Jersey often goes too far, whether it’s bullying teachers or rejecting much-needed federal financing for a tunnel under the Hudson. Last month, however, the bluster was aimed at the right targets: ignorance and religious intolerance. He erupted in outrage at critics who attacked his decision to nominate Sohail Mohammed, a Muslim lawyer, to be a state judge.

The nastiest commentary came in January when Mr. Christie announced his choice. One anti-Muslim blogger wrote that it meant New Jersey had “taken its first step toward becoming the Shariah state.” Another wrote that Mr. Christie (who insists he isn’t running for president) was “off the list.”

Some of New Jersey’s state senators bought into this irrationality, grilling Mr. Mohammed during his June confirmation hearing about his views on “jihad.” Fortunately, rationality finally prevailed and the Senate approved him as a Superior Court judge in Passaic County.

Mr. Christie’s response to all this, like a lot of his pugnacious moments, is available on YouTube. “This Shariah law business is crap,” he fumed. “It’s just crazy, and I’m tired of dealing with the crazies.” He praised Mr. Mohammed for his work as an attorney after Sept. 11, 2001, helping to free Muslims unfairly caught in the F.B.I.’s sweep of arrests. And he praised him for later working with law enforcement to combat future terrorist attacks, adding, “I’m happy that he’s willing to serve after all this baloney.”

We hope those words will shame his friends on the Republican right and finally quiet all the candidates who are cynically trawling for votes claiming, absurdly, that Muslim religious law is threatening to take over the American legal system.

As Mr. Christie said, it’s baloney.

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Christine O'Donnell walks out on Piers Morgan
CBS News: August 18, 2011

If you want to sell a book, and you seek out live television platforms to do so - particularly television news chat shows hosted by former tabloid editors - you had better be prepared to discuss the most contentious themes in that book.

Christine O'Donnell was not, and the tea party darling of Delaware was prepared to leave CNN host Piers Morgan in the lurch and call him rude to avoid discussing the hot-button issue of gay marriage on Wednesday night.

O'Donnell... is touting her new book, "Trouble Maker".

Her publicists clearly laid out ground rules for the interview with Morgan - the former editor of one of Britain's biggest tabloids who's carved a tidy career out of spilling stars' salacious secrets - which likely banned any discussion of topics not in the book.

But Morgan either chose to ignore those ground rules, the rules failed to specify that only certain topics from the book were fair game, or O'Donnell's team failed to realize the book does, in fact, address the theme of gay marriage.

Following the "warm-them-up-first" trajectory, Morgan let O'Donnell speak about her topic of preference, the state of America's finances, before getting at the social issues which he knew would make for more compelling television. But it wasn't long before Morgan brought up O'Donnell's previous remarks about masturbation and her Catholic-rooted beliefs regarding homosexuality and marriage.

"I obviously want to talk about the issue that I talk about in the book," she warned Morgan.

"Do you answer that question in the book?" Morgan fired back.

"I talk about my religious beliefs, yeah," she said, before quickly attempting to re-shift the focus onto her book's goal of bolstering tea party members in their effort to "bring America back to the second American revolution. That's my goal, that's my focus right now."

It was not, however, what Morgan wanted to focus on, so he tried again on the gay marriage theme by asking O'Donnell whether she agreed with Michele Bachmann's stance on the military's soon-to-be-repealed "don't ask don't tell" policy.

At this, O'Donnell became visibly annoyed, but forced a laugh and refused to answer the question, again pointing out the fact that she was "not talking about policies" (at least, not the policies she didn't want to talk about) as she's not running for office.

Morgan's next question likely marked the beginning of the end of his interview:

"Why are you being so weird about this?"

"I'm not being weird about this, Piers. I'm not running for office, I'm not promoting a legislative agenda. I'm promoting the policies that I lay out in the book, that are mostly fiscal, that are mostly constitutional. That's why I agreed to come on your show, that's what I want to talk about. I'm not being weird, you're being a little rude," she told the host.

"I think I'm being rather charming and respectful," retorted a seemingly confused Morgan, in a way that only an Englishman could.

"Don't you think as a host, if I say this is what I want to talk about, that's what we should address?"

"No," replied Morgan.

"Have you read the book?" asked O'Donnell.

"Yes, but these issues are in your book, that's my point. You do talk about them," he pleaded, but by this stage it was too late.

The camera on O'Donnell had pulled away, she was taking her microphone off, and the interview was over.

Here's the video. Please click √

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Neighbors Say Brooklyn Tent Revival Volume So Loud,
They’re Praying To God It Stops
DEP Called In To Measure Decibel Levels Of Gospel Tabernacle Church
CBS New York: August 17, 2011

NEW YORK — A church group in Brooklyn says they set up a tent in Flatbush to spread the word of God. But neighbors say the message is so loud, it’s keeping them up at night. Every night for the entire month of August the Gospel Tabernacle Church hosts a spiritual revival.

Some neighbors say they’re not bothered by the message. They are bothered by the volume of the message.

“Even with the windows closed, AC running, TV blasting, I feel like I’m sitting in the middle of the revival,” Stacie Williams told CBS 2’s Hazel Sanchez.

“My son who is 4 years old, says at night ‘I can’t go to sleep because I can hear the church,’” Janee Harvey added.

Harvey has complained to the church group, police, city officials, and even started a neighborhood petition to get the group to quiet down. Bishop Kingsford Bloomfield said his Gospel Tabernacle Church is addressing the problem.

“We have tried to keep our levels down, but still enough so the community can hear us,” Bishop Bloomfield said.

Neighbor Tobi Parks measured illegal levels on her meter. “Every night if this is what you had to face when you’re trying to go to sleep or you’re trying to have dinner with your family and you know you’re hearing noise coming out, you know it definitely starts to invade all parts of your life,” Parks said.

EXTRA

COMMENTS Rodin The Dutch of the Golden Age (XVII c.), who gave us oil paint, the art gallery, genre painting and still life, letter writing, the postal service, international trade, the stock market, the tulip and gin, also embraced religious tolerance, “freedom of religion” … and FROM it. While the they were free to believe or not in whatever got them through the night, it was to be done so privately. Banned were all outward manifestations and religious symbols. No proselytizing, no problem, no noise. KEEP YOUR FAITHS OUT OF MY FACE! August 17, 2011 at 9:08 am doc in NJ @Rodin caught you. Blatant plagiarism! Give credit where it is due (even if this is only a comment blog on a news site). Mark Oppenheimer from the Times wrote your entire seemingly extemporaneous prose in Oct, 2010. I read your post and remembered reading those exact words somewhere….thus http://markoppenheimer.com/front-page/post-mortem-on-the-atheism-article.html Shame on you… I’ve read your comments many times thinking you were as cerebral as me… oh well, another “Google smarty pants.” I’ve lost my respect for you. August 17, 2011 at 9:55 am Rodin GOT ME!!!!! I’ have been OUTED! I must confess. Plagiarism it is NOT. THAT IS ME, that comment is mine and all the links are from MY WEBSITE. See: http://www.from-the-doghouse.com/CANINE_QUOTES/Anasagasti/Anasagasti_List.html#Personal There I am with my Schnauzer, RODIN, who lets me use his e-mail address because his paws don’t allow him to type. http://www.from-the-doghouse.com/RODIN-DgH/Rodin.html IDIOT! August 17, 2011 at 10:42 am doc in NJ @ Rodin my apologies, dear knowledgeable Sir. as an aside, your erudite writing is most refreshing. August 17, 2011 at 12:28 pm Rodin Apologies accepted. No hard feelings. Friendly advice: you shoulda done a search of my name. There are about 35,600 results on Google. I’m not exactly anonymous. Good without god. ~ RC. August 17, 2011 at 2:10 pm Rodin PS - I’m NOT erudite. I don’t know more than others. I just question more … and learn. August 17, 2011 at 2:15 pm

MADONNO AND CHILD
IN THE GARDEN OF HEATHEN

Did not see this coming:
Psychic frauds busted after raking in $40M over 20 years, feds say
BY BOB KAPPSTATTER AND MIKE JACCARINO
DAILY NEWS: Wednesday, August 17th 2011

Some psychics who the feds say are swindlers running a fortune-telling biz near The Plaza hotel didn't see this one coming.

The Secret Service busted nine of the Marks clan Tuesday - two in New York and the rest in Florida - after a probe revealed mystic skulduggery stretching from New York to Florida, prosecutors say.

The feds, who dubbed their investigation Operation Crystal Ball, say the family ran a psychic conoperation and raked in about $40 million over 20 years, according to The Miami Herald.

According to a 61-count indictment, the Marks clan offered tall tales of divine help - at a cost of a pretty penny.

Nancy Marks, who lived on W.58th St., squeezed a client for the partial cost of a Cartier watch, telling her she would use the timepiece to "turn back time and bring love back" into her life, The Herald reported.

The client wound up with an empty watch box.

AHMADIYYA FLAG

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Deden Sudjana (left), a member of Ahmadiyya, a minority Muslim sect that many conservative Muslims consider heretical, was found guilty by a district court in Banten Province on charges stemming from the attack in February. Judges said that he had refused police orders to leave the scene and that he had wounded one of the attackers.

The judges rejected a charge of incitement leveled by prosecutors, who had sought a sentence of nine months.

The clash, in the remote district of Cikeusik, caused outrage after a graphic video of it surfaced online. It showed the police offering little resistance as more than 1,000 villagers descended on a home where 21 Ahmadis were staying, killing three of them and then beating and stomping on their mud-covered bodies.

The attack and trial that followed were widely denounced as evidence of declining religious tolerance in Indonesia, where the police, government officials and the justice system have often appeared reluctant to punish — and, in some cases, are accused of having colluded with — Islamic hard-liners, who have engaged in increasingly frequent attacks on Christian churches and on properties owned by Ahmadiyya.

Last month the same court sentenced 12 villagers, including a 17-year-old seen in the video bashing a man’s skull with a rock, to three to six months in jail for their involvement in the attack.

Prosecutors did not seek charges of murder or manslaughter.

Views of Imelda Marcos' closet with 2700 pairs of shoes

“It was a shameful exhibit"

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

WARREN JEFFS

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

At Sentencing

 

 

 

 

Polygamist Leader Convicted
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS: August 5, 2011

Texas - The polygamist sect leader Warren S. Jeffs was convicted of child sexual assault on Thursday, in a case involving two girls he took as brides in “spiritual marriages.” Prosecutors used DNA evidence to show he fathered a child with a 15-year-old and played an audio recording of what they said was him sexually assaulting a 12-year-old girl. They also played recordings in which he was heard instructing young women on how to please him sexually. Mr. Jeffs, 55, head of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, claimed that his religious rights were being trampled on and that God would seek revenge if the trial continue.

(Full text)

Polygamist Leader Gets Life in Prison for Assault
THE ASSOCIATED PRESS: August 9, 2011

SAN ANGELO, Texas — Polygamist leader Warren Jeffs recorded everything he said. Thousands of pages, written with Biblical flourish, about God wanting him to take 12-year-old wives. About those girls needing to sexually please him. About men he banished for not building his temple fast enough.

Facing his last chance to keep his freedom, Jeffs didn't say a word.

He was sentenced to life in prison Tuesday for sexually assaulting one of his child brides — among 24 underage wives prosecutors said Jeffs collected — and received the maximum 20-year punishment on a separate child sex conviction. Jeffs, 55, will not be eligible for parole until he is at least 100 years old.

The head of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints made no plea for leniency. He ordered his attorneys not to call witnesses during the sentencing phase, and forbade them from making a closing argument Tuesday. Less than half an hour later, jurors returned with the harshest punishment possible.

"He's a pervert, and the crazy thing is, he perverted his own religion," his sister, Elaine Jeffs, said after the sentencing. Nearby, police escorted her brother into a waiting patrol car.

Despite the convictions and life sentence, Jeffs remains in control of the FLDS and its roughly 10,000 followers. His most devoted consider him God's spokesman on earth and a prophet, but his followers were absent in court for the bulk of the trial.

Prosecutors suggested that the polygamist leader told the girls they needed to have sex with him — in what Jeffs called "heavenly" or "celestial" sessions — in order to atone for sins in his community. Several times in his journals, Jeffs wrote of God telling him to take more and more young girls as brides "who can be worked with and easily taught."

NICHOLAS KRISTOF

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Seeking Balance on the Mideast
By NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF, OP-ED COLUMNIST
The New York Times: August 4, 2011

Congress periodically showcases the warts of democracy, occasionally even the deformities and disfigurements, and it might seem difficult to top the latest debt ceiling horrors. But there’s one area where Congress has been even more obstructionist: the Middle East.

Next month, Palestinians are expected to seek statehood at the United Nations. It’s a stunt that won’t accomplish much for anybody, but it’s more constructive than throwing rocks at Israeli cars — or, on the Israeli side, better than expanding illegal settlements. A prominent Israeli politician, Isaac Herzog, has shrewdly suggested that Israel actually offer, with conditions, to vote in favor of Palestinian statehood at the United Nations.

Yet the American House of Representatives voted 407 to 6 to call on the Obama administration to use its diplomatic capital to try to block the initiative, while also threatening to cut the Palestinians’ funding if they proceeded to seek statehood.

Similarly, when Israel stormed into Gaza in 2008 to halt rocket attacks, more than 1,300 Gazans were killed, along with 13 Israelis, according to B’Tselem, a respected Israeli human rights group. As Gazan blood flowed, the House, by a vote of 390 to 5, hailed the invasion as “Israel’s right to defend itself.”

Such Congressional tomfoolery bewilders our friends and fritters away our international capital. It also encourages the intransigence of the Israeli government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and reduces the chance of a peace settlement.

In the last few years, a former government official named Jeremy Ben-Ami has been trying to change the political dynamic in Washington with a new organization — J Street — that presses Congress and the White House to show more balance. Ben-Ami has just published a book, “A New Voice for Israel,” that is a clarion call for American reasonableness in the Middle East.

“If things don’t change pretty soon, chances are that the two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict will slip through our fingers,” Ben-Ami writes. “As that happens, the dream of the Jewish people to be a free people in their own land also slowly disappears.”

Ben-Ami, who worked in Bill Clinton’s White House, comes from a long line of Zionists, and his ancestors helped found Tel Aviv. But he’s aghast at the way the United States is enabling hard-line Israeli policies that make peace less likely.

American Jews have long trended liberal, and President Obama won 78 percent of the Jewish vote in 2008. Yet major Jewish organizations, like the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, or Aipac, embrace hawkish positions.

That’s because those Jews who vote and donate based on Israel are disproportionately conservative (the same is true of Christians who are most passionate about Israel issues).

“What happens as Israel continues to become more religious and conservative, more isolated internationally and less democratic domestically?” Ben-Ami writes. “What happens to the relationship between American Jews and Israel as the face of Israel shifts from that of Yitzhak Rabin and Shimon Peres to that of the national religious settlers and the ultra-Orthodox rabbis?”

Whenever I write about Israel, I get accused of double standards because I don’t spill as much ink denouncing worse abuses by, say, Syria. I plead guilty.

I demand more of Israel partly because my tax dollars supply arms and aid to Israel.

I hold democratic allies like Israel to a higher standard — just as I do the U.S.

EZEKIEL'S VISION
Raphaelo Santi

Only half of Americans approve of God's job performance
By MARK DUELL
The Daily Mail: 2nd August 2011

WHERE IS YOUR GOD?

A survey says only half of Americans who believe in God approve of how he is handling the universe. Two in five said they were ‘unsure’ and nine per cent ‘did not approve’ in the pol. More than half support His animal kingdom governance.

Only half of Americans approve of God's job performance... but at least the Lord polled better than Murdoch and Boehner. The Deity did better than both political parties, each of which got a god awful rating of just 33 percent. A third back Boehner and Murdoch gets 12 per cent.

ARCHDIOCESE
of
NEW YORK

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Controversy Swirls Around Bronx Catholic School Principal Accused Of Having Racist Views
CBSNewYork: August 1, 2011

NEW YORK – A Catholic school principal is the focus of controversy in the Bronx after a published report revealed his writings and views were tied to white supremacy.

Frank Borzellieri was hired as the principal of Our Lady of Mount Carmel School in 2009 by Rev. Eric Rapaglia. The two had previously worked together at St. Barnabas.

In 2004, Borzellieri authored a book called “Don’t Take it Personally: Race, Immigration, Crime and Other Heresies.”

Borzellieri wrote “diversity is a weakness” and claims increasing black and Hispanic populations in the United States will lead to what he calls a “new dark age.”

Borzellieri has also written for the white supremacist publication American Renaissance.

“It offends me. I’m Puerto Rican and my children are half black — It offends me,” parishioner Ann Joseph told CBS 2.

As a school board member in District 24 from 1993 to 2002, Borzellieri reportedly tried to ban literature he called “anti-American” which included a biography on Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. and fire an openly gay teacher.

“Honestly, I don’t know how he managed to slip through the cracks,” Carol Ann Joseph said.

“It’s ridiculous, I can’t understand why the church would allow this,” a parishioner said.

A day after the report was published, churchgoer Juan Varela, of Queens, was arrested after interrupting mass Sunday at the church to call for Borzellieri’s ouster. Varela was charged with disorderly conduct and possession of a weapon because he was carrying a knife.

Spokesman for the Archdiocese, Joe Zwilling, said there have been no complaints about Borzellieri during his two-year tenure at the school.

“The superintendent of schools office has been reviewing his books and discussing the matter with him and the pastor of the parish that hired him. The process is still ongoing,” Zwilling said.

Borzellieri could not be reached for comment.

The Archdiocese, which says Mount Carmel is known for its diversity, will now have to decide what the principal’s beliefs are regarding diversity and whether they conflict with church teaching.

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Islamists Flood Square in Cairo in Show of Strength
By ANTHONY SHADID
The New York Times: July 30, 2011

A protester from a Salafist group, among the most conservative and puritan Islamist movements, shouted Koranic verses and held an Egyptian flag at a rally on Friday in Tahrir Square in Cairo.
Amr Abdallah Dalsh/Reuters

A demonstration Friday in Cairo's Tahrir Square
Khalil Hamra/Associated Press

Pfc. NASER JASON ABDO

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Pfc. NASER JASON ABDO

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Soldier Held Amid Claim of Terror Plot at Fort Hood
By J. DAVID GOODMAN
The New York Times: July 29, 2011

An Army private who had been absent without leave since earlier this month was arrested this week near Fort Hood with a gun and suspicious materials in what local law enforcement officials described on Thursday as a “terror plot” to kill other soldiers.

During questioning after his arrest, the soldier, Pfc. Naser Jason Abdo, admitted that he specifically planned to attack Fort Hood, The Associated Press reported Thursday night. An F.B.I. spokesman said that he could not provide further details because it was a continuting investigation.

The police in Killeen, Tex., arrested Private Abdo in a motel room near the southern edge of the base on Wednesday, one day after a clerk at a local gun store alerted the police about a suspicious purchase, the police said.

According to a law enforcement official, among the items found in Private Abdo’s room at the time of his arrest were a military uniform with Fort Hood patches, a pistol, shotgun shells and an article on “how to make a bomb in your kitchen” from the English-language Qaeda magazine Inspire. He also had more than one wall clock, a cellphone, duct tape and a shopping list for what appeared to be explosive components, the official said.

At an afternoon news conference, Dennis M. Baldwin, the Killeen police chief, underscored what he felt was the seriousness of the situation: “We probably would be here giving you a different briefing had he not been stopped.” Private Abdo, who joined the Army in April 2009, gained national attention last summer when he refused to deploy with his unit to Afghanistan, insisting that his Muslim faith prevented him from serving. He fought his deployment since 2010 and gave multiple interviews.

“I was under the impression that I could serve both the U.S. Army and my God simultaneously,” he said in a television interview with CNN last summer. “As the time had come near to deployment, I started really asking myself and taking the question more seriously whether God would accept what I was doing and whether I was really meant to go to war as opposed to the peace that Islam preaches.”

Army officials said that Private Abdo was granted conscientious objector status in May, but his discharge was put on hold after the Army said it had discovered at least 34 images of child pornography on his computer.

Soldier Arrested in Suspected Bomb Plot Had
Series of Disputes With Army
By MANNY FERNANDEZ and JAMES DAO
The New York: July 29, 2011

KILLEEN, Tex. — The 21-year-old Army private arrested here this week made his first appearance in federal court on Friday, two days after telling investigators he planned to detonate explosive devices at a restaurant frequented by soldiers from nearby Fort Hood, the culmination of a series of disputes between the private and the military over his Muslim beliefs and his pending deployment to Afghanistan.

The private told F.B.I. officials that he planned to assemble two bombs in the hotel room “using gunpowder and shrapnel packed into pressure cookers to detonate inside” the restaurant, according to the federal complaint.

And while the legal papers gave no indication of Private Abdo’s motive, he offered a window into his thinking at his court appearance in United States District Court in Waco. At one point, Private Abdo shouted several remarks, including a supportive reference to Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan, the Army psychiatrist accused of killing 13 people and wounding dozens of others at Fort Hood in November 2009.

He had been charged with possession of child pornography and was facing a trial in military court. He had sought and received conscientious objector status from Army officials, insisting that his Muslim faith prevented him from serving in Afghanistan. His discharge, approved in May, was placed on hold after the Army discovered the images of child pornography on his government-issued computer.

In an interview with The New York Times several months ago, Private Abdo said that when he joined the Army he had different beliefs. In February 2010, his brigade at Fort Campbell — the First Brigade Combat Team of the 101st Airborne Division — was deployed to Afghanistan, but Private Abdo stayed behind to attend language school to learn Pashto, one of the national languages of Afghanistan.

He said he was eventually told he would join his brigade in June 2010. “Preparing for deployment made me investigate my religion,” he said. He said he had decided that “the price of refusing to go is much lower than facing my God,” adding that the only war justified by God is a just war. “If there is no divine inspiration, it is murder,” he said in the interview

Col. Thomas Collins, a spokesman for the Army, said the deputy assistant secretary concluded that Private Abdo had “satisfied the burden of establishing that he was a conscientious objector. The standard is that he was opposed to war in any form.”

The captain who initially reviewed Private Abdo’s application at Fort Campbell, James Bredeman, recommended in a 2010 memo that he receive objector status because he showed “a firm and fixed objection to participation in war in any form” and showed “sincere regret” for putting the Army before his religion.

Quoting the private, Captain Bredeman wrote that Private Abdo felt at the time that serving in the wars would “bring justice to those who were giving Islam a bad name.”

During basic training, Private Abdo said that his rapport with his peers was “horrible” and that he was harassed because of his religion. He also complained that he was unable to fast during Ramadan or say his prayers five times a day. By the time he reached Fort Campbell, he had developed “serious questions about his place in the Army,” the memo said.

In September 2004, the police in Garland, a city about 13 miles north of Dallas, arrested Private Abdo’s father after he tried to solicit sex from a detective posing over the Internet as a teenage girl. He was charged with solicitation of a minor with intent to commit sexual assault of a child, a police spokesman said.

DARUL ULUM

Muslim Seminary Chief in India Is Fired for Pro-Hindu Interview
By HARI KUMAR
Published: July 24, 2011

NEW DELHI — India’s best-known Islamic seminary ousted its reformist leader on Sunday, less than seven months after he assumed the post, because he was quoted as speaking favorably of a Hindu nationalist suspected of fomenting deadly anti-Muslim riots.

The reformer, Mullah Ghulam Mohammed Vastanvi (right), was appointed in January to lead the seminary, Darul Uloom, in the city of Deoband in Uttar Pradesh State. He had become popular in part because of the success of his madrasas, or Islamic schools, in the western Indian state of Maharashtra that bridged traditional Islamic education with the needs of the modern world by teaching students secular subjects like science and computer programming. He had hoped to bring those innovations to Darul Uloom.

But the effort was almost immediately derailed when he was quoted in an Urdu newspaper as saying that Muslims in Gujarat State needed to move beyond the 2002 sectarian riots there, one of the worst eruptions of religious violence since colonial India was partitioned in 1947. Hindus rampaged through Muslim areas of Gujarat, leaving about 1,000 people dead and leading to reprisals in some areas.

English-language newspapers and television stations in India portrayed Mullah Vastanvi’s remarks as implicitly condoning the actions of Narendra Modi (right), the controversial leader of Gujarat’s government. Many Muslims blame Mr. Modi for the 2002 violence.

OSLO
Government offices

ANDERS BEHRING BREIVIK

UTØYA ISLAND

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Police Say Oslo Suspect Admits to ‘Facts’ in Massacre
By STEVEN ERLANGER and ALAN COWELL
The New York Times: July 25, 2011

OSLO — The Norwegian man charged with attacks in and near Oslo, killing over 90 people, has admitted “to the facts” of the case, the police and his lawyer said on Sunday, and claims to have acted alone in a strike eerily foretold in a detailed manifesto calling for a Christian war to defend Europe against the threat of Muslim domination.

But, acting police chief Sveinung Sponheim told a news conference, “he is not admitting criminal guilt” and his claim to have acted alone contrasted with “some of the witness statements,” Reuters reported.

The attacks on Friday — a huge bombing in central Oslo closely followed by a bloody rampage against young people on nearby Utoya island — was the deadliest attack in this Nordic nation since World War II, and stunned many in a population of some five million used to seeing their land as a haven of peace.

The police said on Sunday that the toll had risen to 93 from 92 with the death of one of the 97 earlier reported as injured. Most of the bodies were found on Utoya island, where young people from the dominant Labor Party had gathered for an annual camp.

Police identified the suspect as Anders Behring Breivik, 32, a right-wing fundamentalist Christian, while acquaintances described him as a gun-loving Norwegian obsessed with what he saw as the threats of multiculturalism and Muslim immigration.

Police divers were still searching the lake around Utøya island for bodies, and said there were fears the death toll could rise.

On Sunday, muted and shaken by the magnitude of the killings, many people gathered at the Lutheran cathedral here to mourn. King Harald V (top left) and Queen Sonja (center left), both dabbing away tears, joined Prime Minister Jens Stoltenberg (bottom left)and other dignitaries who attended a service inside while many more gathered outside.

In a 1,500-page manifesto, posted on the Web hours before the attacks, Mr. Breivik recorded a day-by-day diary of months of planning for the attacks, and claimed to be part of a small group that intended to “seize political and military control of Western European countries and implement a cultural conservative political agenda.”

He predicted a conflagration that would kill or injure more than a million people, adding, “The time for dialogue is over. We gave peace a chance. The time for armed resistance has come.”

The manifesto was signed Andrew Berwick, an Anglicized version of his name. A former American government official briefed on the case said investigators believed the manifesto was Mr. Breivik’s work.

The manifesto, entitled “2083: A European Declaration of Independence,” equates liberalism and multiculturalism with “cultural Marxism,” which the document says is destroying European Christian civilization.

The document also describes a secret meeting in London in April 2002 to reconstitute the Knights Templar, a Crusader military order. It says the meeting was attended by nine representatives of eight European countries, evidently including Mr. Breivik, with an additional three members unable to attend, including a “European-American.”

Thomas Hegghammer, a terrorism specialist at the Norwegian Defense Research Establishment, said the manifesto bears an eerie resemblance to those of Osama bin Laden and other Al Qaeda leaders, though from a Christian rather than a Muslim point of view. Like Mr. Breivik’s manuscript, the major Qaeda declarations have detailed accounts of the Crusades, a pronounced sense of historical grievance and calls for apocalyptic warfare to defeat the religious and cultural enemy.
“It seems to be an attempt to mirror Al Qaeda, exactly in reverse,” Mr. Hegghammer said.

Besides the manifesto, Mr. Breivik left other hints of his motives. A Facebook page and Twitter account were set up under his name days before the rampage. The Facebook page cites philosophers like Machiavelli, Kant and John Stuart Mill.

His lone Twitter post, while not calling for violence, paraphrased Mill — “One person with a belief is equal to the force of 100,000 who have only interests”....

“Breivik feels that multiculturalism is destroying the society and that the enforcing authority is the prime minister and the Labor Party, the lead party of contemporary Norwegian politics,” said Anders Romarheim, a fellow at the Norwegian Institute for Defense Studies.

But the attacks, along with what appear to have been years of preparation, raised questions about whether the Norwegian security authorities, concentrating on threats of Islamic terrorism, had overlooked the threat from the anti-Islamic right.

[Mr. Breivik had been known as a polite and conscientious man by former colleagues. But his writings in the right-wing web site, Document.no,revealed another side, an abiding obsession with Marxists, Muslims and Norway's multicultural ideals.

Though he did not call for violence in the postings, he denounced the demographic change that he said had undermined Christian communities in Kosovo and Lebanon. Mr Breivik wrote: "Can you name ONE country where multiculturalism is successful where Islam is involved?"]

“This is the Norwegian equivalent to Timothy McVeigh (left),” the right-wing American who bombed a federal building in Oklahoma City in 1995, said Marcus Buck, a political scientist at the University of Tromso in northern Norway.

Mr. Romarheim,of the Norwegian Institute for Defense Studies, said in some ways the homegrown nature of the attack made it harder for Norwegians to accept. “With 9/11 in America, people could ask, ‘Who are they?’ and could pour their rage out on someone else,” he said. “But we can’t disavow this person, he’s one of us. [That's a sobering thought.”]

He added:
"It was international jihadism we feared, but what we have now is more painful in terms of a re-evaluation of ourselves."

[ ] Barckets mark additions from the NYT hard copy

GO TO NEXT ARTICLE

 

 

JULY 25, 2011 Despite the Norway killings, Representative Peter T. King, the New York Republican who is chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee, said he had no plans to broaden contentious hearings about the radicalization of Muslim Americans and would hold the third one as planned on Wednesday. He said his committee focused on terrorist threats with foreign ties and suggested that the Judiciary Committee might be more appropriate for looking at non-Muslim threats.

CONTINUE BELOW

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Killings in Norway Spotlight Anti-Muslim Thought in U.S.
By SCOTT SHANE
The New York Times: July 25, 2011

The man accused of the killing spree in Norway was deeply influenced by a small group of American bloggers and writers who have warned for years about the threat from Islam, lacing his 1,500-page manifesto with quotations from them, as well as copying multiple passages from the tract of the Unabomber.

In the document he posted online, Anders Behring Breivik, who is accused of bombing government buildings and killing scores of young people at a Labor Party camp, showed that he had closely followed the acrimonious American debate over Islam.

His manifesto, which denounced Norwegian politicians as failing to defend the country from Islamic influence, quoted Robert Spencer (right), who operates the Jihad Watch Web site, 64 times, and cited other Western writers who shared his view that Muslim immigrants pose a grave danger to Western culture.

More broadly, the mass killings in Norway, with their echo of the 1995 bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City by an antigovernment militant, have focused new attention around the world on the subculture of anti-Muslim bloggers and right-wing activists and renewed a debate over the focus of counterterrorism efforts.

In the United States, critics have asserted that the intense spotlight on the threat from Islamic militants has unfairly vilified Muslim Americans while dangerously playing down the threat of attacks from other domestic radicals. The author of a 2009 Department of Homeland Security report on right-wing extremism withdrawn by the department after criticism from conservatives repeated on Sunday his claim that the department had tilted too heavily toward the threat from Islamic militants.

SCRATCH A LIBERAL, FIND A FASCIST In 2009, when the Department of Homeland Security produced a report, “Rightwing Extremism,” suggesting that the recession and the election of an African-American president might increase the threat from white supremacists, conservatives in Congress strongly objected. Janet Napolitano, the homeland security secretary, quickly withdrew the report and apologized for what she said were its flaws.

The revelations about Mr. Breivik’s American influences exploded on the blogs over the weekend, putting Mr. Spencer and other self-described “counterjihad” activists on the defensive, as their critics suggested that their portrayal of Islam as a threat to the West indirectly fostered the crimes in Norway.

Mr. Spencer wrote on his Web site, jihadwatch.org, that “the blame game” had begun, “as if killing a lot of children aids the defense against the global jihad and Islamic supremacism, or has anything remotely to do with anything we have ever advocated.” He did not mention Mr. Breivik’s voluminous quotations from his writings.

The Gates of Vienna, a blog that ordinarily keeps up a drumbeat of anti-Islamist news and commentary, closed its pages to comments Sunday “due to the unusual situation in which it has recently found itself.”

Its operator, who describes himself as a Virginia consultant and uses the pseudonym “Baron Bodissey,” wrote on the site Sunday that “at no time has any part of the Counterjihad advocated violence.”

The name of that Web site — a reference to the siege of Vienna in 1683 by Muslim fighters who, the blog says in its headnote, “seemed poised to overrun Christian Europe” — was echoed in the title Mr. Breivik chose for his manifesto: “2083: A European Declaration of Independence.” He chose that year, the 400th anniversary of the siege, as the target for the triumph of Christian forces in the European civil war he called for to drive out Islamic influence.

[Mr. Breivik] quoted the American and European counterjihad writers by name, notably Mr. Spencer, author of 10 books, including “Islam Unveiled” and “The Truth About Muhammad.”

Mr. Breivik frequently cited another blog, Atlas Shrugs, and recommended the Gates of Vienna among Web sites. Pamela Geller, an outspoken critic of Islam who runs Atlas Shrugs, wrote on her blog Sunday that any assertion that she or other antijihad writers bore any responsibility for Mr. Breivik’s actions was “ridiculous.”

“If anyone incited him to violence, it was Islamic supremacists,” she wrote.

Marc Sageman, a former C.I.A. officer and a consultant on terrorism, said it would be unfair to attribute Mr. Breivik’s violence to the writers who helped shape his world view. But at the same time, he said the counterjihad writers do argue that the fundamentalist Salafi branch of Islam “is the infrastructure from which Al Qaeda emerged.

"Well, they and their writings are the infrastructure from which Breivik emerged.”

“This rhetoric,” he added, “is not cost-free.”

PLEASE READ ON

ANDERS BEHRING BREIVIK

Lawyer Suggests Suspect in Norway Attacks Is Insane
By STEVEN ERLANGER
The New York Times: July 27, 2011

OSLO — The Oslo police on Tuesday evening began a gradual release of the names of the dead in the Norway massacre, as the lawyer representing the man who admitted responsibility said he thought his client was insane and would spend the rest of his life incarcerated.

The lawyer, Geir Lippestad (left), declined to say whether his client, Anders Behring Breivik, 32, would plead insanity as a defense when his case finally reached the trial stage. But he described Mr. Breivik as “very cold,” distanced from the real world and believing that he was a warrior destined to die for the eventual salvation of European Christian values.

“This whole case has indicated that he is insane,” Mr. Lippestad said.

“I can’t describe him because he’s not like anyone.”

AMERICA LEADS THE WAY
(below)

HOME GROWN
on rhetoric

	Active 2008 Jim David Adkisson Motivated by a desire to kill liberals and Democrats, fired a shotgun at members of the congregation at Knoxville Unitarian Universalist church.	Active 2010 John Patrick Bedell Anarcho-capitalist libertarian, shot two Pentagon police officers at a security checkpoint in the Pentagon station of the Washington Metro mass-transit system in Arlington County, Virginia.	Active 1978 to 1995 Ted Kaczynski "Unabomber" Sent 16 bombs to targets including universities and airlines, killing three people and injuring 23. Authored a 35,000-word essay Industrial Society and Its Future. Part of Anders Breivik's manifesto was taken almost word for word from the first few pages.	Active 2011 Jared Lee Loughner Charged with the January 8, 2011 Tucson, Arizona shooting that killed six people and left 14 others injured. He was known to believe, and to say, that women should not hold positions of power and instead conspiracy theories had a profound effect on him.

Active 1995 Timothy McVeigh Infamous for detonating a truck bomb in front of the Alfred P. Murrah Building in Oklahoma City on April 19, 1995. He was a militia movement sympathizer, sought revenge against the federal government for its handling of the Waco Siege and hoped to inspire a revolt against what he considered to be a tyrannical federal government.	Active 1995 Terry Lynn Nichols Conspired with McVeigh in the planning and preparation of the Oklahoma City bombin Developed anti-government views, attended meetings of anti-government groups, experimented with explosives and got more radical over time. McVeigh and Nichols were enraged by the attack on the the Branch Davidian compound in Waco, Texasand began to plot revenge on the federal government.	Active 2009 Scott Roeder Anti-abortion activist shot and killed George Tiller, a physician from Wichita, Kansas who was nationally known for being one of the few doctors in the United States to perform late-term abortions, because "preborn children's lives were in imminent danger" during a Sunday morning service at the Reformation Lutheran Church in Wichita.	Active 2010 Joseph Stack Flying his Piper Dakota, crashed into Building I of the Echelon office complex in Austin, Texas, killing himself and Internal Revenue Service manager Vernon Hunter. Thirteen others were injured, two seriously. In a suicide note, he begins by expressing displeasure with the government, the bailout of financial institutions, politicians, conglomerate companies, unions, drug and health care insurance companies, and the Catholic Church.	Active 2009 James von Brunn A white supremacist and Holocaust denier who had written numerous antisemitic essays, created an antisemitic website called The Holy Western Empire, and is the author of a 1999 self published book, Kill the Best Gentiles. Perpetrated the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum shooting in Washington, D.C. on June 10, 2009. Security guard Stephen Tyrone Johns was killed in the shooting.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Al Qaeda magazine pokes fun at fall of sexting pol Anthony Weiner
BY JOSEPH STRAW
Thursday, July 21st 2011

WASHINGTON - Even terrorists are making Weiner jokes.

In Al Qaeda's latest edition of its chilling e-magazine, "Inspire," the terror network's Arabian Peninsula syndicate settles a score with former Queens Rep. Anthony Weiner, gloating about the sexter's salacious downfall.

A faux full-page ad in the summer issue bears a photo of a feisty Weiner speaking before the House of Representatives under the banner, "An angry Weiner head."

The fake ad in the Al Qaeda mag was "brought to you by a Cold Diss" (at bottom of page).


Weiner landed himself on Al Qaeda's radar screen last year when he joined the chorus calling on YouTube to remove more than 700 videos featuring radical American cleric Anwar al-Awlaki (left), still hiding out in Yemen.

The magazine's suspected publisher, former Queens resident Samir Khan (right), 25, apparently didn't forget what Weiner said about his boss.

Saintly Walmart Receipt

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

South Carolina couple claims to possess Wal-Mart receipt with the face of Christ
BY MIKE JACCARINO
NY DAILY NEWS: Thursday, July 21st 2011

A South Carolina couple claims to possess one heckuva of a saintly sales slip--a Wal-Mart check-out receipt with the face of Christ on it.

Gentry Lee Sutherland and Jacob Simmons got the blessed bill of sale upon paying for the development of 11 photos June 12 at a Wal-Mart store in Travelers Rest, S.C.

"People are going to believe what they want to believe," said Sutherland.
"There's tons of people who will say, 'Oh, we're in the Bible Belt,' but here's my question to the doubters, who else has the power to put their face on a check-out receipt but Jesus?"

It wasn't until three days after they paid for the photos that Sutherland and Simmons divined the two eyes and bushy beard and hair that is now so evident when they look at the receipt.

"When I got home, I laid the receipt for the film on the kitchen counter and three days later we went to church like we usually do on Wednesday night," said Sutherland.

The theme for that night's service at College Park Worship Center--a Christian church--in Berea, S.C., she said, was intimacy with God. "The message was getting to know God," Sutherland recalled. "The question they asked was, 'Would you know Jesus if you saw him?'" After the service, the couple returned to Sutherland's home to watch a movie.

"Right before we were about to start I noticed Jacob standing beside the counter. I said, 'What's wrong with you?'"

"He said, 'Look at this receipt.' I just looked at it and it looked kind of brown, and he said, 'No, Look at it.' So I took a second look and then I saw the face. The message we had just heard at church an hour before went through my mind."

Sutherland, 21, who attends North Greenville University and is engaged to Simmons, says that she was initially scared of the image.

"I always wondered why in the Bible when someone saw an angel they were afraid, but now I know," she explained. "We're human beings and we're not used to seeing that kind of thing.

"We're just sharing it with family and friends," Sutherland added. "To be honest, I'm just glad it's gotten out this fast. It's worldwide. We don't know what we're going to do with it. We'll pray about it. For now, we'll just share the love and blessing."

(Full text)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Central Islip pastor convicted of sex abuse dies behind bars
News 12: July 19, 2011

CENTRAL ISLIP – A Central Islip pastor who sexually abused young congregants has died while serving time.

Cops say John Gargano claimed to be the Archangel Gabriel to convince young people at the Eternal Tabernacle Church to have sex with him.

Gargano’s victims included a 14-year-old girl. Gargano was convicted of sex abuse in 1991.

Gargano died Saturday at a Westchester hospital.

(Full text)

SYRIA

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Deaths in Syria Tied to Rift Between Sects
By NADA BAKRI
The New York Times: July 19, 2011

BEIRUT, Lebanon — At least six people have been killed in a wave of sectarian bloodshed in the central province of Homs, including three people whose bodies were mutilated, activists and residents there said Monday.

The violence signaled a dangerous turn in the four-month-old antigovernment uprising, as tensions seem to mount among segments of Syria’s religiously mixed society. Although most Syrians are Sunni Muslims, President Bashar al-Assad and his ruling clan belong to the minority Alawite sect, an offshoot of Islam.

Residents and pro-democracy activists said the government has been enlisting thousands of plainclothes security men, known as shabiha, since March to help quell dissent. Most of the shabiha are Alawites, and resentment against them runs high: many people accuse them of killing thousands of unarmed civilians.

On Sunday, residents of Homs, Syria’s second-largest city, discovered the bodies of three Alawites mutilated and dumped in a deserted area, according to Omar Idlibi of the Local Coordination Committees, a group that helps organize and document protests. All three were armed government loyalists, he said.

News of the deaths enraged other Alawites, who went on a rampage, according to residents and activists. Three people were killed, including a mother of three, and scores of shops owned by Sunnis were burned and vandalized, Mr. Idlibi said.

“The reaction was so violent and quick that we suspect the regime had a hand in the killings,” Mr. Idlibi said.

Opposition figures have accused the government of fomenting sectarian tensions in order to present itself as the only authority that can maintain stability and protect minorities, which include religious groups like Shiites, Christians and Druze and ethnic groups like Kurds and Circassians. Many Syrians have voiced fears that the uprising could ignite sectarian warfare.

“It’s like a time bomb,” said a protest organizer.
“Sectarianism is the regime’s wild card.”

(Full text)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Not Befitting a Democracy
EDITORIAL
The New York Times: July 17, 2011

Israel’s reputation as a vibrant democracy has been seriously tarnished by a new law intended to stifle outspoken critics of its occupation of the West Bank.

The law, approved in a 47-to-38 vote by Parliament, effectively bans any public call for a boycott — economic, cultural or academic — against Israel or its West Bank settlements, making such action a punishable offense.
It would enable Israeli citizens to bring civil suits against people and organizations instigating such boycotts, and subject violators to monetary penalties. Companies and organizations supporting a boycott could be barred from bidding on government contracts. Nonprofit groups could lose tax benefits.

The law has rightly drawn fierce criticism in Israel. The newspaper Haaretz called it “politically opportunistic and antidemocratic,” and warned that it and other recently enacted laws were “transforming Israel’s legal code into a disturbingly dictatorial document.” In the United States, the Anti-Defamation League — which strongly supports Israel and opposes boycotts against it — warned that the law impinged on the “basic democratic rights of Israelis to freedom of speech and freedom of expression.”

We are also opposed to boycotts of Israel, but agree this is a fundamental issue of free speech.

Israel’s conservative government is determined to crush a growing push by Palestinians and their supporters for boycotts, disinvestment and sanctions against Israel. Since last year, many Israeli artists and intellectuals, as well international artists, have canceled performances and programs in Israel and the West Bank to protest the settlements. The bill’s sponsor, Zeev Elkin (above), said his concern was that the calls for a boycott “increasingly have come from within our own midst.”

With peace talks stalemated, Palestinians are searching for ways to keep alive their dream of a two-state solution, including a push for United Nations recognition this fall. Israel risks further isolating itself internationally with this attempt to stifle critics.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu (right) should have exercised leadership and urged lawmakers against doing their country serious harm. While Mr. Netanyahu was absent for the vote, he eagerly insisted that it would never have passed
“if I had not authorized it.”

Advocates said the law was needed to prevent efforts to “delegitimize” Israel, but no country can be delegitimized if it holds true to its democratic principles. Opponents are already challenging the law in court. We hope they succeed, for Israel’s sake.

(Full text)

Britain: Church Bars Gay Priests With Partners From Being Bishops
THE ASSOCIATED PRESS : July 2, 2011

Church of England bishops said Friday that they had temporarily barred priests in civil partnerships from being appointed as bishops. The church’s policy is that gay male priests who are celibate are eligible to become bishops. The statement from the House of Bishops said a review of civil relationships would be completed next year.

(Full article)

Photos
left: Canterbury Cathedral / right :Rowan Williams, Archbishop of Canterbury

'EVOLVING'

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Gay Marriage: Where’s Mr. Obama?
EDITORIAL
The New York Times: June 27, 2011

On Thursday night, when same-sex marriage in New York State was teetering on a razor’s edge, President Obama had a perfect opportunity to show the results of his supposed evolution on gay marriage.

Unfortunately, he did not take it, keeping his own views in the shadows. The next night the Republican-led New York State Senate, of all places, proved itself more forward-thinking than the president on one of the last great civil-rights debates in this nation’s history.

Speaking to the Democratic Party’s LGBT Leadership Council at a fund-raiser in New York, Mr. Obama ran through the many efforts he has made on behalf of gay rights, including his decision to end the government’s legal support of the Defense of Marriage Act, which forbids federal recognition of same-sex marriage. The act should be repealed, he said, since marriage is defined by the states.

Mr. Obama’s legal formula suggests he is fine with the six states that now permit same-sex marriage, and fine with the more than three dozen other states that ban it. By refusing to say whether he supports it (as he did in 1996) or opposes it (as he did in 2008), he remained in a straddle that will soon strain public patience. For now, all Mr. Obama promised was a gauzy new “chapter” in the story if he is re-elected, and his views remain officially “evolving.”

Fundamental equality, however, is hardly the equivalent of a liquor law that can vary on opposite sides of a state line. Why is Mr. Obama so reluctant to say the words that could lend strength to a national effort now backed by a majority of Americans?

In the 2008 campaign, when Mr. Obama said he supported civil unions and believed marriage should be between men and women, he may have wanted to appeal to slightly more conservative voters who were wary of him.

After he took office, it became evident that Republicans intended to portray him as a radical, out-of-touch leftist no matter what he did. Supporting same-sex marriage at this point is hardly going to change that drumbeat, and any voter for whom that is a make-or-break issue will probably not be an Obama supporter anyway.

Firm support for gay marriage is, on the other hand, likely to help him among his cheerless base. Mr. Obama opposes the Defense of Marriage Act and is presiding over the repeal of “don’t ask, don’t tell.” He signed the United Nations declaration on gay rights, and allowed the Census to count same-sex relationships.

But he has been absent from the biggest and most difficult drive of all.

Public opinion has swung toward acceptance of gay marriage since 2008; five more states and the District of Columbia have lifted marriage bans. Thousands of gay men and lesbians now possess marriage certificates and many former skeptics have come to realize that the moral foundation of the country has been strengthened. It is long past time for the president to catch up.

He often criticizes discrimination with the memorable phrase, “that’s not who we are.” Favoring this discrimination should not be who he is.

(Full editorial)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Florida Suit Says Arrests Are Retaliation for Atheism
By LIZETTE ALVAREZ
The New York Times: June 25, 2011

MIAMI — An atheist in Central Florida filed suit in Federal District Court in Tampa on Friday, accusing the Polk County sheriff, an evangelical Christian, of harassing and unnecessarily arresting her as retaliation for not believing in God and for her efforts to keep prayer out of public meetings.

EllenBeth Wachs (left), the legal coordinator for the group Atheists of Florida, asked the court to prevent the sheriff, Grady Judd (right), from conducting any new investigations, arrests or complaints resulting from her “nonreligious, atheist viewpoint in the predominantly Christian-oriented Polk County, Fla.” The sheriff’s actions, including two arrests and searches of her house, violated her First Amendment rights and her right to due process, the suit states.

A vocal advocate for the separation of church and state, Ms. Wachs has attended several school board meetings where sessions began with prayer and asked that a moment of silence be observed instead. The sheriff is equally committed, to Christian values. He has received national attention for his focus on rooting out pornography as well as pedophiles and other sexual offenders. The suit states that the sheriff used Scripture in an agency newsletter, among other things.

The imbroglio between Ms. Wachs, 48, who lives in Lakeland, and Sheriff Judd dates to last year when the sheriff removed the basketball hoops from the Polk County jail and donated them to several local churches.

This angered Ms. Wachs, who filed several public-records requests on the matter. A nonpracticing lawyer, she signed the requests with the designation Esquire after her name. Sheriff Judd sent a team of officers to arrest her and charged her in March with illegally posing as a lawyer, a felony.

“This does not violate any bar rules,” said her lawyer, Lawrence G. Walters (left). “She is allowed to use esquire.”

Ms. Wachs was arrested a second time, in May, for moaning repeatedly in a sexual manner from an open window in her house, saying, “Oh, John,” in a crescendo, as a ploy to stop neighbors, including a young boy, from playing basketball. The moans followed a dispute with the neighbor. The sheriff’s office arrested her on a felony sex charge. The police searched her house and took away a safe, among other things.

Later that month, the police arrested her again and charged her with possession of marijuana, after saying they had found drugs in the safe.

The sheriff’s office declined to comment on the lawsuit.

“We are asking a federal judge to put a stop to this madness,” Mr. Walters said. “We want to try to stop a rogue sheriff who is abusing his authority as a law enforcement officer to punish a vocal atheist in town for her viewpoint and political beliefs.”

(Full article)

Woman Gets Probation After Bloody Chicken Sacrifice Ritual
CBS New York/AP: June 25, 2011

HACKENSACK, N.J.— A Pennsylvania woman who made her daughter observe a bloody religious ritual in New Jersey has been sentenced to 18 months probation.

Yenitza Colichon (left) of Jamesburg pleaded guilty last month to child neglect and cruelty charges stemming from the May 2007 incident, in which she made her 7-year-old daughter watch an initiation rite in Paterson that included a chicken sacrifice and feeding the girl its heart.

Passaic County prosecutors say Colichon was about to start Army basic training and wanted to protect her daughter in the Palo Mayombe religion before she left. The religion originated in central Africa. The girl later told a teacher that she was having nightmares and child welfare officials were contacted.

The couple who performed the ritual was allowed to enter a pre-trial program on Friday.

(Full article)

'Teacher Wang' fined for false prophecy
By News Desk in Taipei/The China Post | ANN: Fri, Jun 24, 2011

Taipei - The Nantou District Court has slapped Wang Chao-hung, known as "Teacher Wang," with a NT$40,000 (US$1,400) fine for causing widespread panic with his false doomsday prophecy last month.

The judge ruled that Wang, 55, had violated the Social Order Maintenance Law with his prediction that on May 11, 2011, mass devastation would consume Taiwan in the form of a deadly earthquake. The entries were made on his blog as early as November 22, 2010; two more were added on February 13 and March 15.

The blog posts were detailed and troubling, especially for the gullible. Wang "foresaw" a calamity-plagued Taipei City, with a death toll of 153,402 and 287,410 more injured. By the portentous May 11, "between one-third to one-fifth" of the world's population will be gone.

In a press interview, Wang claimed that at 10:42:37 on May 11, a magnitude 14 earthquake followed by a 170-meter tsunami would consume Taiwan, taking with it 1 million lives.

While the predicted "doomsday" came and went, one would not describe May 11 as "unceremonious;" by then, hundreds of Wang's followers had migrated to Nantou County's Puli Township, camping out in shelters made out of cargo containers.

When nothing, aside from a few temblors, occurred after a countdown, Wang was forced to admit that he made the premonitions under the influence of alcohol.

Although the false teacher tried to blame news media for hyping up his claims, the judge ruled that Wang maliciously fed upon the nation's fear of earthquakes and tsunamis. The baseless "prophet" had severely disturbed the social order, especially when one takes into account the numbers of plastic containers purchased upon Wang's urgent encouragements.

"Teacher Wang" was fined NT$40,000; he may appeal the case within five days of the Nantou District Court verdict.

(Full article)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Closing door on church weddings
By JOSH SAUL and LEONARD GREENE
New York Post: June 21, 2011

Don't book the minister just yet.

Clergy across the state are divided over whether they'll perform same-sex marriages if they become legal.

The Catholic Church adamantly opposes gay marriage and would not perform same-sex nuptials. "One has to wonder why the proponents of this radical redefinition, who claim overwhelming popular support, would not consider a referendum on such a drastic departure from traditional values?" Archbishop Timothy Dolan wrote on his blog.

The Catholic Church is joined by Greek Orthodox leaders, who have voiced opposition to same-sex marriage and last year supported a marriage-protection amendment to the Constitution.

The nation's Methodist churches are also against gay marriages, although some ministers have risked defrocking in defiance of the ban.

Episcopal churches in the state have expressed support for the legislation, but it wasn't immediately clear if they'd actually allow same-sex nuptials in their churches.

"The attitudes are much more varied about that than whether civil service takes place," said Nicholas Richardson, a spokesman for the Episcopal Diocese of New York. "There are people among us not in support of church ceremonies to celebrate same-sex marriages."

In New York's Jewish communities, Orthodox groups have almost unanimously oppose same-sex marriage, while reform rabbis have been mostly supportive. Conservative groups are divided.

The bill does not compel clergy members to conduct same-sex marriages, but some Republican lawmakers are concerned the legal protection is not strong enough.

Republican Senate leader Dean Skelos said he wants churches to be protected from discrimination suits if they refuse to perform ceremonies or provide accommodations for gay weddings.

The Rev. Stephen H. Phelps (right), interim senior minister at Manhattan's Riverside Church, an interdenominational congregation, said, "The state must not continue to use its barriers and its laws to keep people from enjoying the privilege of marriage. It's flat-out discriminatory. There's no other word for it."

Even so, Phelps said he could not speak for the other ministers at his church. And, although he said he would officiate at same-sex marriages, he said he would prefer couples with strong Christian beliefs.

 

 

REVEREND SENATOR
RUBÉN DÍAZ

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

REVEREND SENATOR
RUBÉN DÍAZ

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

BRIAN BROWN

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

New Square Arson Victim Blames Attack On Community’s Religious Intolerance
CBS2 New York: June 8, 2011

NEW SQUARE, N.Y. — After being the victim of a frightening arson attack, New Square resident Aron Rottenberg spoke from his hospital bed on Wednesday.

Rottenberg told CBS 2 that he blames the leaders of an Hasidic sect for creating the intolerant atmosphere that led to his injuries.

Rottenberg talked about the attack on his home that left him burned over half of his body on Wednesday. He told an investigator hired by his attorney how he tackled the masked intruder behind his home.

Rotteberg is a dissident in a community that values conformity. The Hasidic Skver sect under Grand Rebbe David Twersky (right) controls the village of New Square, and Rottenberg described his act of defiance.

“I’m going to pray outside New Square, to pray with the elderly and the sick,” he said.

Rottenberg said harassment followed his split with the rabbi, including the breaking of windows on his car and his home. It got so bad, in fact, that he installed infrared cameras to alert his family of danger.

The lights never came on at the property, and the arsonist – who was initially scared away – may have felt it was safe to return. That’s when, Rottenberg said, he came outside and hid behind a tree, then jumping the intruder and sparking an explosion of flame.

Police arrested 18-year-old Shaul Spitzer, described as a butler who lives in the grand rebbe’s home. He was hospitalized for burns to his hands, and is now free on $300,000 bail. Additional arrests were expected.

Rottenberg said that in the days leading up to the attack, the community ostracized his family. “They actually kicked my…daughter (Malki, right) out of school, also. Everything for the same reason,” Rottenberg said.

The girl found her desk and papers left on the front porch. Like the rest of the Rottenberg family, she said she’s terrified.

EXTRA

nuchemisright.blogspot.com

Within 24-Hours of this terrible tragedy, there were flyers all over town of New Square proclaiming that the man that was burned was not of the best quality.

The main points of the letter were:

1. He had marriage problems, his wife wanted to leave him, and only the community leaders saved the marriage years ago.

2. The man is not really religious, he never cared what his kids look like, and there for his kids look the way they do (off the Chasidic way).

3. While his father passed away, he did not say “Kadish” for his father and didn’t daven at all.

 

NS Victim's Family Shouted Down at Press Conference
Journal News

A press conference held today by family members of a man badly burned in an arson attack turned into a shouting match when a village man called the family's lawyer an anti-Semite for going against the grand rabbi.

Aron Rottenberg's son-in-law, Moshe Elbaum, was interrupted several times at the press conference by village resident Shulem Sofar.

Sofar refuted the family's claims and during a heated exchange said Sussman was “anti-semitic.” When Elbaum asked what his father-in-law had done wrong, Shulem replied: “It's the wrong thing to do against the rabbi.”

Click √ to watch news conferemce video

CIVIC VIRTUE

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

WEINER GETS TESTY

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

WEINER

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

THE MORALIST

Pols say selling 'sexist' Queens statue on craigslist would be a civic virtue
BY LISA. L. COLANGELO
NY DAILY NEWS : Friday, February 25th 2011

A controversial Queens statue, featured as an "Eyesore Next Door" in the Daily News, should be sold through an online classifieds site, according to a group of elected officials.

U.S. Rep. Anthony Weiner said the city should ditch the statue, "Triumph of Civic Virtue" [by famed turn-of-the-century American sculptor Frederick MacMonnies (1863-1937) depicting a nude man representing 'civic virtue' trampling the twin sirens of 'vice' and 'corruption,'] because it is "sexist."

Some community leaders have tried for years to get the city to pay for the restoration of the decaying statue.

Weiner and City Councilwoman Julissa Ferreras (D-Jackson Heights) - who want to sell the statue on craigslist to raise funds - said it is offensive because it depicts a nude man stepping on two women.

Some leaders don't want to tear the statue down.

"It's been one of the board's top priorities for years to have that statue restored," said Mary Ann Carey, district manager of Community Board 9 in Queens. "We're not looking to destroy art."

THE LIE

Rep. Anthony Weiner says crotch photo posted via his Twitter was work of hacker
BY ALISON GENDAR
DAILY NEWS ;Sunday, May 29th 2011

WASHINGTON - Weiner jokes apparently never grow old.

Twitter followers of Rep. Anthony Weiner (D-Brooklyn) got an eyeful late Friday night when a hacker posted a lewd crotch-shot photo from his Twitter account.

The photo of a man's bulging gray briefs - no face visible - was sent to only one female Twitter user, but was visible to all 45,000 of the lawmaker's Twitter followers.

His staff-taking the matter seriously-said both his Facebook and Twitter accounts had been hacked.

"This is intended to be a distraction, and we're not going to let it become one. Anthony's accounts were obviously hacked. He doesn't know the person named by the hacker, and we will be consulting on what steps to take next," said Weiner's spokesman Dave Arnold.

The congressman noticed the hack almost immediately and removed the photo himself. But it had already been retweeted and grabbed by several followers and appeared on Conservative websites.

Weiner soon posted his own tongue-in-cheek response.

"Tivo shot. FB hacked. Is my blender gonna attack me next?" he joked, later adding: "Touche Prof Moriarity. More Weiner Jokes for all my guests!"
The web hijinks continued as Weiner's alleged "member" now has its own Twitter page and followers.

(Full article)

CÓRDOVA BROUSSARD WEISS GINGER LEE NOBLES

Rep. Anthony Weiner snaps at reporter asking about lewd picture that came from his Twitter feed BY ALISON GENDAR DAILY NEWS: June 1st 2011 WASHINGTON - Rep. Anthony Weiner got testy with reporters yesterday who pestered him about a lewd photo posted on his Twitter feed - a pic he insists was a hacker's "prank." In a heated exchange at the Capitol, Weiner barked at reporters that he was done talking about the drama that set the blogosphere abuzz over the weekend. "If I were giving a speech to 45,000 people and someone in the back threw a pie or yelled an insult, I would not spend the next two hours of my speech responding to that pie or that insult," he said. Weiner called one reporter a "jackass" for repeatedly interrupting to ask if the Queens Democrat had really posted the photo. He steadfastly refused to answer reporters' questions about why, if his Twitter account was hacked, he hired a lawyer instead of filing a complaint with the police.

THE TRUTH

Anthony Weiner Resigns: The congressman's rise and fall resembles Shakespearean tragedy
BY LARRY MCSHANE
DAILY NEWS:Thursday, June 16th 2011

The rise and fall of Anthony Weiner is the stuff of Shakespearean tragedy - if the Bard had owned a laptop.

The congressman's two-decade trip from outer borough obscurity to front-page infamy ended badly Thursday, as his resignation capped his precipitous fall from grace.

The fault, as Shakespeare sagely observed in "Julius Caesar," was not in the stars but in Weiner himself.

The nerdy son of a city schoolteacher was born and raised in Brooklyn. The skinny, ambitious kid became a protegee of then-Congressman Chuck Schumer, spending six years working with the now-Senator.

Weiner, stepping out of Schumer's shadow in 1991, became the youngest person ever elected to the City Council at age 27.

When Schumer mounted his Senate campaign in 1998, Weiner was elected as his successor and moved onto the national stage.

The new Congressman courted publicity and earned a reputation for hard work. Like Schumer (right), he became known for his Sunday news conferences - putting himself front and center on a typically slow news days.

New York Magazine labeled Weiner "an ascendant force in New York politics," while the Daily News dubbed him one of the "Leaders of the Twenty-First Century."

The Forward called him one of the 50 most influential Jewish Americans....

"Nail up some indecency in plain sight over your door; from that time forward you will be rid of all respectable people,the most insupportable folk God has created." ~ PAUL GAUGUIN