Category Archives: Religion
Oppressed Minority
NPR’s sacking of Juan Williams for incorrect Muslim thoughts has created an uproar. Politico says Fox News has offered to help relieve Williams’ oppression with a 3 year contract worth $2 million.
Nasty Free Speech
The creeps who protest at the funerals of dead soldiers appeared before the Supreme Court on Wednesday. They were sued by the father of Matthew Snyder, a marine whose funeral they picketed. The protesters are led by a preacher named Fred Phelps. Their beef is with homosexuality and they claim that dead soldiers are God’s punishment. The thing is, unless the Supreme Being files a brief, they may be well within their rights. A 1988 court ruling, Hustler Magazine v. Falwell, unanimously upheld the right to nasty speech unless it can be proven false.
USA Today has a complete story with video.
Down in Pagan Polls
Who among us, in our carefree youth, has not had a date on a satanic alter? Here’s Bill Maher apologizing to Christine O’Donnell for making her life a “living hell”. This has not played well in the Witch community. They are offended that Americans think all Wiccans are Satanists. Click here for the “Witch’s Voice” in the Huffington Post.
UPDATE: A spokesperson for the neopagan network “The Witches’ Voice” who goes by the name “Diotima Mantineia” reached out to the Huffington Post to offer further condemnation of O’Donnell’s initial witchcraft remarks. Making the point that there is a “very large pagan community in Delaware,” Mantineia called the Delaware Republican’s conflation of witchcraft and Satanism “disappointing.”
I really have to question what she is talking about because witchcraft and Satanism are two different things… witches or Wiccans do not believe in Satan. We don’t even believe that Satan exists. Satan is a Christian deity of some kind. He is part of the Christian religion not ours. We worship nature; we work very closely with nature. We do not have blood on our altar and we have little to do with Satan. So I don’t know what Ms. O’Donnell is talking about. I wonder if she knows what she was talking about.
Nicholas Kristof apology to follow.
Burning Issue
Pyro Pastor Terry Jones of the Dove World Outreach Center in Gainesville, Fl wants to flaunt his religious freedom by firing up a few Korans on September 11. Mayor Bloomberg, in the New York Post, defends the Rev’s right to do it on the same grounds he insists the Ground Zero Mosque must be built. Maybe Bloomberg was motivated by this Ann Coulter piece singing him for hipocrisy – or maybe Ann missed the Post story.
First Amendment vs. First Amendment
Pelosi wants an investigation of first amendment stomping Ground Zero Mosque protesters. Nat Hentoff is investigating the man behind the mosque, Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf. Hentoff, a powerful defender of the first amendment, doesn’t care for the location of Cordoba House either. Here’s his column.
The New Republic’s Todd Gitlin thinks the mosque is swell. Both writers take a look at the Imam’s book, What’s Right with Islam is What’s Right with America, and his claim that Islamic law fits the U.S. Constitution. Here’s Gitlin’s column.
