New American Dark Ages
East Valley Tribune | Daily Arizona News for Chandler, Gilbert, Mesa, Tempe, Scottsdale
Ethics reform is one of those issues that flare brightly after some new outrage and then fade quickly as members revert to business as usual. Thus, the campaign for higher standards is not over. Said [Senator John] McCain after the vote: “The good news is there will be more indictments, and we will be revisiting this issue.”
DeLay’s righthand man was on the take. So, was DeLay oblivious or involved. Which do you like better: inept or corrupt? mjh
A Force Behind the Power By Juliet Eilperin and Jeffrey H. Birnbaum, Washington Post Staff Writers
When Rep. Tom DeLay (R-Tex.) was working his way up the leadership ladder in the 1990s, he often turned to an athletic assistant named Tony C. Rudy.
Rudy, now 39, was known as a bare-knuckle political operator who was trusted explicitly by his ambitious boss. … With Rudy’s help, DeLay rose to the No. 2 position in the House Republican leadership.
Teaching the Bible in Georgia’s Public Schools – New York Times By BRENDA GOODMAN
Georgia is about to become the first state to approve the use of the Bible as a textbook in public schools.
On Monday, the State Senate passed a bill providing money to high schools that offer elective classes in the Bible, and setting specific guidelines for those classes. The bill was approved by Georgia’s House of Representatives last week.
Gov. Sonny Perdue is expected to sign the law.
The bill creates two courses, the History and Literature of the Old Testament Era and the History and Literature of the New Testament Era, that can be offered as electives. It gives the state’s Department of Education a year to approve the curriculum, but it requires that the Bible itself, not a textbook, be the core material used. Supplementary materials can also be used.
Other state school systems offer classes in the Bible, but Georgia’s law would be the first to require that the Bible be the core text. Legislators in Alabama and Missouri are considering similar measures. …
The closest thing to a Bible-as-literature class Georgia schools now offer is an elective in comparative religion, and Education Department officials said it is not in great demand. Only 800 students out of 400,000 in state high schools signed up for the class last year, they said. …
The Christian Coalition of Georgia has strongly supported the legislation. The group’s chairwoman, Sadie Fields, said the courses were “another way to help students think critically.” [mjh: LOL. ‘Bible literalism’ encourages critical thinking? When there is only one truth and no others, “critical thinking” means learning how to reject all other views.]
State Senator Williams disputed predictions of the classes’ popularity among Georgia students.
“Where it’s been taught, it’s my understanding it’s a very popular course,” he said. “It’s a very interesting book, by the way.”
Georgia School Superintendent Kathy Cox visits Walker schools Eric Beavers
State School Superintendent Kathy Cox said Wednesday she’s solidly behind a measure that would allow the Bible to be used as a textbook in Georgia’s public schools.
“I think this is much ado about nothing,” Cox said about controversy over the issue, as she toured three Walker County schools. “I was a world history teacher for 15 years, and in world history you teach Greek mythology, you teach Buddhism, you teach Judaism, you teach Confucius — you teach all the world’s religion as part of world history, including Christianity.”
I can’t be the only one creeped out about how Evangelical Christians have completely immersed themselves in a war-mindset. It makes them a great tool for fascism. mjh
‘War’ on Christians Is Alleged
Conference Depicts a Culture Hostile to Evangelical Beliefs
By Alan Cooperman, Washington Post Staff Writer
The “War on Christmas” has morphed into a “War on Christians.” …
Among the … speakers [at the two-day conference in Washington on the “War on Christians and the Values Voters in 2006”] were former House majority leader Tom DeLay (R-Tex.) and Sens. John Cornyn (R-Tex.) and Sam Brownback (R-Kan.) as well as conservative Christian leaders Phyllis Schlafly, Rod Parsley, Gary Bauer, Janet Parshall and Alan Keyes.
To many of the 400 evangelicals packed into a small ballroom at the Omni Shoreham Hotel, it was a hard but necessary look at moral relativism, hedonism and Christophobia, or fear of Christ, to pick just a few terms offered by various speakers referring to the enemy.
To some outsiders, it illuminated the paranoia of the Christian right. …
“This is a skirmish over religious pluralism, and the inclination to see it as a war against Christianity strikes me as a spoiled-brat response by Christians who have always enjoyed the privileges of a majority position,” said the Rev. Robert M. Franklin, a minister in the Church of God in Christ and professor of social ethics at Emory University.
White evangelicals make up about one-quarter of the U.S. population, and 85 percent of Americans identify themselves as Christians. But three-quarters of evangelicals believe they are a minority under siege and nearly half believe they are looked down upon by most of their fellow citizens, according to a 2004 poll. …
In a luncheon speech yesterday, DeLay took issue with the “chattering classes” who think there is no war on Christians.
“We are after all a society that abides abortion on demand, that has killed millions of innocent children, that degrades the institution of marriage and often treats Christianity like some second-rate superstition. Seen from this perspective, of course there is a war on Christianity,” he said. [mjh: let me be the first to call Christianity a first-rate superstition]
I watched part of Ron Luce’s Battle Cry on the Christian channel 23 (you’d be shocked how much time I spend on that channel — my wife certainly is — but I feel you’ve got to know what this particular group is up to; besides, it’s always cool to see TDJakes). Battle Cry addresses teenagers as being attacked by their culture and forced to sit in a pen with pigs (me, maybe you). It uses hip-hop and skateboard culture to reach the youngins. Reminds me of that King of the Hill episode when Bobby joins a bunch of Christian skateboarders. mjh
Evangelical teens rally in S.F. Joe Garofoli, Chronicle Staff Writer
“This is more than a spiritual war,” [Ron] Luce, [whose Teen Mania organization is based in Texas,] said. “It’s a culture war.”
Military metaphors abound in Luce’s descriptions of the struggle. He tells young people of how “an enemy has launched a brutal attack on them.” At a pre-Battle Cry rally Friday afternoon on the steps of City Hall, Luce told his mostly teenage audience that “terrorists of a different kind” — advertisers — were targeting them and that they were “caught in the middle of the battle.” [mjh: “Terrorists”? Aren’t we overusing this term?]
“Are you ready to go to battle for your generation?” he asked, and the young people roared “yes!” and some waved triangular red flags flown from long, medieval-looking poles.
Democrats Detail Security Policy By Chris Cillizza and Dan Balz, Washington Post Staff Writers
Democrats unveiled a national security platform [3/30] for the midterm elections that stresses renewed focus on capturing Osama bin Laden, reducing the U.S. presence in Iraq and stepped up protection at home. …
Declaring that the administration’s “dangerous incompetence has made America less safe,” Reid said, “We are uniting behind a national security agenda that is tough and smart, an agenda that will provide the real security President Bush has promised, but failed to deliver.” …
Albright decried the Bush administration’s “rank incompetence” on such issues as the Iraq war and the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. Albright called for a security plan based on “facts not fantasy.”
I ran across these two linked articles by chance and did a double-take when I saw the dates were nearly a year ago. I remember Curveball, but don’t remember the American press calling him a crazy drunkerd, as the Brits did. I don’t recall the Blackwater controversy at all. mjh
The Observer | International | US relied on ‘drunken liar’ to justify war Edward Helmore in New York
Sunday April 3, 2005
The Observer
An alcoholic cousin of an aide to Ahmed Chalabi has emerged as the key source in the US rationale for going to war in Iraq.
According to a US presidential commission looking into pre-war intelligence failures, the basis for pivotal intelligence on Iraq’s alleged biological weapons programmes and fleet of mobile labs was a spy described as ‘crazy’ by his intelligence handlers and a ‘congenital liar’ by his friends.
The defector, given the code-name Curveball by the CIA, has emerged as the central figure in the corruption of US intelligence estimates on Iraq. Despite considerable doubts over Curveball’s credibility, his claims were included in the administration’s case for war without caveat.
Fury at US Security Firm’s ‘Shoot for Fun’ Memo by Mark Townsend
One of the biggest private security firms in Iraq has created outrage after a memo to staff claimed it is ‘fun’ to shoot people.
Emails seen by The Observer reveal that employees of Blackwater Security were recently sent a message stating that ‘actually it is “fun” to shoot some people.’
Dated 7 March [2005] and bearing the name of Blackwater’s president, Gary Jackson, the electronic newsletter adds that terrorists ‘need to get creamed, and it’s fun, meaning satisfying, to do the shooting of such folk.’
This latest story is really just “business as usual.” It shouldn’t be very hard to run against these greedy influence peddlers and money launderers. mjh
Former DeLay Aide Enriched By Nonprofit
Bulk of Group’s Funds Tied to Abramoff
By R. Jeffrey Smith, Washington Post Staff Writer
A top adviser to former House Whip Tom DeLay received more than a third of all the money collected by the U.S. Family Network, a nonprofit organization the adviser created to promote a pro-family political agenda in Congress, according to the group’s accounting records.
DeLay’s former chief of staff, Edwin A. Buckham, who helped create the group while still in DeLay’s employ, and his wife, Wendy, were the principal beneficiaries of the group’s $3.02 million in revenue, collecting payments totaling $1,022,729 during a five-year period ending in 2001, public and private records show.
The group’s revenue was drawn mostly from clients of Republican lobbyist Jack Abramoff, according to its records. …
The group’s payments to the Buckhams — in the form of a monthly retainer as well as commissions on donations by Abramoff’s clients — overlapped briefly with Edwin Buckham’s service as chief of staff to DeLay and continued during his subsequent role as DeLay’s chief political adviser.
During this latter period, Buckham and his wife, Wendy, acting through their consulting firm, made monthly payments averaging $3,200-$3,400 apiece to DeLay’s wife, Christine, for three of the years in which he collected money from the USFN and some other clients. [mjh: this is money-laundering] …
Wendy Buckham was not the only spouse of a DeLay staffer to benefit from the USFN revenue stream sustained by Abramoff’s clients. A consulting firm owned by the wife of Tony C. Rudy, DeLay’s deputy chief of staff, was paid $15,600 by the group in 1999 and another $10,400 in 2000. Rudy resigned to work with Abramoff in 2001. It could not be determined what the payments were for. …
Before the U.S. Family Network folded in 2001 under pressure from an FEC probe, it became involved in other controversial political matters.
In 1998, the group lobbied Congress against new regulations on cigarettes and collected a $100,000 donation from the R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Co. It also spent $75,863 that year on radio ads that called for President Clinton’s resignation and attacked Democrats, according to the group’s ledger and transcripts of the ads.
The following year, the National Republican Congressional Committee gave the USFN a $500,000 check to finance additional radio ads in the districts of vulnerable Democrats.