ACLU: Respect for Prayer “Tragic”

Liberty Minnie has just heard about the case where a high school football coach got in trouble for bowing his head while the members of the football team prayed. In the old days, atheists and other non-believers bowed their head during a prayer out of politeness.

Politeness is dead, and the ACLU reportedly called the event ‘tragic’.

http://www.christianpost.com/article/20071007/29608_U.S._Appeals_Court_to_Decide_Whether_Coach_Can_Kneel_While_Student_Athletes_Pray.htm

Of course, according to the First Amendment, there is such a thing as freedom of speech, and coaches have the right to actually pray if they want to. There has never been an amendment to the Constitution restricting the right of free Americans to pray. Illegal high court rulings don’t change this.

Also, the First Amendment forbids the government to establish one religion over another as the official religion/denomination of our Christian nation. Current practices in the schools, such as forbidding Christian prayer or viewpoints while insisting on the promotion of the atheist religion, violate this.

Maybe it’s time to start learning our constitutional rights: Below is the text of the First Amendment. Memorize it!

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

Psst — Fred Thompson — Pass it On……

The news media has crowned pro-abortion and anti-Second Amendment candidate Rudy Guiliani as the Republican presidential candidate, and therefore will cover the pro-life presidential candidates even less than it has been— unless we-the-people get out there and promote and popularize a qualified candidate— one who respects human life even when the human involved is old, disabled, depressed, unborn or newly born.

So— what about Fred Thompson? He’s no Sam Brownback, but the media is willing to cover Thompson where it won’t cover Brownback.

Maybe it’s time to create some buzz for Thompson— even if we favor another candidate. How? Blog about Thompson frequently, and use the blog-tags ‘Thompson’ and ‘Fred Thompson’ on each such post. If you use Technorati tags, that will look like this:
thompson fred thompson
Scroll to the bottom of this post to get cut-and-paste codes for these tags.

Link to Fred Thompson’s web page: http://www.fred08.com/ The more links his site gets, the better!
Link to Fred Thompson’s imdb page: http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0000669/ This page is about Fred Thompson’s work as an actor.

And of course you ought to link to other blogs’ pro-Thompson posts.  Find them by searching on Technorati, or you can do a search on Ask.com.

Technorati— blog posts tagged ‘fred thompson’ 

Ask.com Fred Thompson blog search 

If you blog for Thompson, join ‘Bloggers for Thompson’. 

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Fred Thompson and Abortion at Roman Catholic Blog

Add your own (civilized) comments on Fred Thompson via the comment function.

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Cut-and-paste code for ‘Fred Thompson’ tag:

<a href=”http://technorati.com/tag/fred+thompson” rel=”tag”><img style=”border:0;vertical-align:middle;margin-left:.4em” src=”http://static.technorati.com/static/img/pub/icon-utag-16×13.png?tag=fred+thompson” alt=” ” />fred thompson</a>

Cut-and-paste code for ‘Thompson’ tag:

<a href=”http://technorati.com/tag/thompson” rel=”tag”><img style=”border:0;vertical-align:middle;margin-left:.4em” src=”http://static.technorati.com/static/img/pub/icon-utag-16×13.png?tag=fred+thompson” alt=” ” />thompson</a>

Is it time to boycott Google over Ad censorship?

Search engine giant Google has banned a campaign ad from Sen. Susan Collins which criticized MoveOn.org. MoveOn has already run attack ads against the senator, who is a liberal Republican (but evidently not liberal enough).

Google’s business (and high stock price) are because people think of them as neutral. If they are in bed with MoveOn, one starts to question: are the pro-democrat Google ads that appear on conservative blogs intentional? Would Google embed its biases into its search software to promote sites it likes and bury those it doesn’t?

Liberty Minnie had been considering purchasing a bit of Google stock through Sharebuilder, but in the end considered it a bit of a risk stock. It’s a lot more of a risk stock now, as conservatives are going to be dumping stock, boycotting Google and Blogger, and canceling their Google ads accounts.

Boycotting Google may be the right thing to do, but are the competitors any better? One needs to keep a sharp eye on all of them! Too many people out there seem to think ‘free speech’ only applies to liberals.

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Blogging about the topic are:

Google bans anti-MoveOn.org ads

Google hearts MoveOn.org

Google to Advertisers: You’re Not Allowed to Criticize MoveOn.org

Moonbattery: Google Suppresses Criticism of MoveOn.org

Google bans Senator Collins’ anti-MoveOn.org Ads -Google’s Free Speech Double Standard

And Rightly So!: Google & MoveOn: Perfect Bedfellows

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“boycott Google”

Cleveland School Shooter was Angry Atheist

Cleveland school shooter Asa Coon was an angry atheist. He was known as an atheist, and the fight he got in just prior to the shooting is reported to have been about the existence of God, with Coon taking the negative view.

He also had a history of violent behavior, including slapping his own mother when she tried to break up a fight between him and his twin sister.

Parents may be concerned about the atheism connection in this case because of the current trend of atheists to proselytize their religion/anti-religion. There have been a couple of recent books promoting atheism and condemning, often hatefully, Christianity and other similar religions. (One is called ‘God is not Great’, I believe.) There is also a concern over the report that the book ‘The Golden Compass’ and its sequels were not only written by an atheist, but that the author Philip Pullman had said that the books were intended to promote atheism to children (they are marketed as children’s books in England), and that they were about the ‘death of God’.

Liberty Minnie would like to assure parents that they need not worry about the atheism bit. Just read ‘Surprised by Joy’ by author C. S. Lewis. The author became an atheist during his boyhood, and remained one as a young man during his World War One military service (see, there were atheists in foxholes) and his early years at Oxford. During his atheist years he didn’t act up in any violent or even uncivil way because of his atheist non-faith. And he then became a Christian, writing many intellectually profound books defending the Christian faith.

The thing to worry about in the Asa Coon case is that he had a record of violent behavior and had not been permanently expelled from his school In fact, it probably wouldn’t have been possible to get a violent kid expelled until he had committed a violent felony landing him in jail.

I believe the key to preventing a case like this is to have locked-down schools and reforms schools for violent kids, and making removal of the violent kids easier. By this I mean the real violent kids, kids who hit kids (or their own mother), not kids who draw guns or write horror stories. Kids with ‘anger management issues’ need special care— help with their psychological problems and punishment when they commit violent acts. Many violent kids CAN grow up to be worthwhile citizens if they can learn self-control and the moral rules of life.  And if they make the choice to do the right thing.

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Morality without God — can the secular worldview provide a basis for morality? from the blog of James Croft, 3 foot 11 tall evangelist.

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atheist
religion
“c. s. lewis”
asa coon
atheism

The Constitutional Duty to hire Butt-Painting ‘Artists’

Have you heard the story of the school art teacher who was fired when it was found does ‘artwork’ painted using his butt?  This would seem to be a smart move, both because of the incompetence factor  (since he can’t tell the difference between  his a** and a Rembrandt) and because of concerns over the increase of teachers sexually abusing students, which would seem to indicate the firing of butt-painting teacher and internet-boob-flashing teacher.

The ACLU, which really approves of butts and anything connected to them (they defended the elephant-manure Madonna) claims we have a Constitutional right to paint with our butts. Man, I can just visualize our Founding Fathers discussing THAT issue!

Here is the US Constitution, and here is the US Bill of Rights.  I can’t find the words ‘butt-painting’ anywhere!  It also doesn’t say ‘freedom of expression’— the phrase is freedom of speech.

But let’s pretend there is an amendment in the Bill of Rights which states ‘the right of the people to paint with their butts shall not be abridged or denied’.  That has nothing to do with this case.

Employers are allowed to not hire people or to fire people for a number of reasons.  If the cashier at the local Kmart chases you out of the store, screaming ‘drop dead, you wretch’, the store manager is free to fire her, even though she was exercising her Constitutional freedom of speech.

If a teacher has a Constitutional right not to be fired for butt-painting or internet-boob-flashing, that means that the teacher’s employer has a Constitutional duty to hire and retain butt-painting and boob-flashing teachers.  Where does it say THAT in the Constitution?

And there’s another issue.  The purpose for having public schools was that the Founding Fathers believed that only in a nation of Christians would the Constitutional freedoms not lead to anarchy.  The public schools were meant to produce literate Christians, and this did not change until the mid-twentieth century when both the Christianity and the literacy flew out the window.

How does having butt-painters as art teachers fit in to the true purpose of the public schools, anyway?

Consumer Alert on “The Golden Compass”

“The Golden Compass” is a new movie based on the book of the same name by noted atheist Philip Pullman. Pullman says that his goal for the book trilogy is to teach atheism to children. He says that the trilogy is about the death of God.

The hardcore atheist stuff has mostly been pulled out of the movie, but the ‘evil’ force is still called the ‘Magisterium‘. This is the name, in the Catholic church, for the teachings of the church. And the movie is not being promoted openly either as atheist or as anti-Catholic material.

Imagine that some anti-Semites decided to make ‘Protocols of the Elders of Zion‘ into a movie. Let’s say they took out some of the most obvious references to Judaism, but once in a while called the bad guys ‘rabbis’. And let’s say they wanted to market this crud to kids, and admitted that they wanted to promote anti-Semitism to kids.

That’s what this is like.

If you are a Catholic or other Christian, or if you don’t care for religious hatreds, you probably will regret throwing away money on this movie or the books. Liberty Minnie bought ‘The Golden Compass’ some time ago, but she found it so boring that she never got to the hate bits.

There are a few good fantasy authors out there who don’t write anti-Catholic bigotry— some of them even ARE Catholics or other sorts of Christians. There are LOADS of good fantasy writers who don’t write anti-Catholic bigotry on purpose— it crops up just because they think that way and don’t know how to keep it from showing.

That being the case, people who like a good story have no reason to waste their time on Philip Pullman’s hate sermons.

IMPORTANT NOTE FOR THOSE NOT PAYING ATTENTION: Liberty Minnie and others are not saying that the books or the movie should be banned, or the author punished for ‘hate speech’. Let the people who approve of hate enjoy their ‘The Golden Compass’ and their ‘Mein Kampf’. Just don’t con US into buying this hateful stuff by lying about the content.

If you want a GOOD movie, ‘The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian‘ is coming out next year. It’s based on a book by a Christian author, C. S. Lewis, who was an atheist from boyhood to age 33 and was able to write positive characters who were atheists or non-Christians.  To get the word out about this book, post a link to http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0499448/.  (That will help this link rise higher in popularity lists, like Technorati.

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OTHER BLOGGING ON THIS ISSUE:

A dangerous film for our children — from Cause of our Joy

The Golden Compass — Agenda Unmasked — from Te Deum laudamus

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the golden compass

Crandon, Wisc. on ‘lockdown’ after fatal shooting of 5

The small town (pop. 2000) of Crandon, Wisconsin is ‘on lockdown’ after a late-night fatal shooting, in which the suspect is a law enforcement officer.

The story causes Liberty Minnie two big questions:

1. How can a whole town be ‘on lockdown’ while the US Constitution is still in effect? Even in a police state locking down a whole town isn’t common. What if someone needs to go to the store for milk (or, knowing the area, beer)? Liberty Minnie might also point out that in that region, in small towns, many stores close at noon on Sundays and others don’t open at all. Except for the crime scene, what business of the police/government is it to control the rest of the town? The Nanny State rides again. (The shooter might well have driven as far as Liberty Minnie’s home in the time since the shooting— why wasn’t the lockdown extended to all of Wisconsin and Upper Michigan, if they really have the right to do this???)

2. Would this story still be newsworthy if the killer had used a knife or poison? The ‘gun crime’ hysteria among the elite media types leads them to report ‘gun crimes’ to a much greater extent than knife, poison or rope murders with the same victim-numbers.

One may note that even if the gun ban folks had their way, since this shooter supposedly is in law enforcement he still would have had gun access, so no amount of gun bans and raids on private gun owners could have stopped this— though if some of the law-abiding folk on the scene had a gun on them, the shooter might have been stopped.

But what does your cat think about Hillary? Cats for Republicans video

My cat really likes this video. Specifically, my little skinny barn kitten — just promoted to house kitten— named Evangeline after the character in Negima. I’m typing this one-handed because Evangeline is in the other— she keeps jumping up and trying to type.

Cats for Republicans video — click on this link.

Show the video to your cats today!

Child Health Care Bill violates Constitution (so what else is new?)

Pres. Bush is getting grief for vetoing a bill concerning Child Health Care.  But this bill clearly violates the Constitution, which does NOT anywhere mention the federal government being in charge of health care.  According to the Tenth Amendment, that means that the various states get to decide what to do.

There is an advantage to allowing the fifty separate states to decide how much mismanaged socialized medicine they want to inflict on their people. The people of different states may have different ideas on what they think is the best way.  And they can compare what is done in other states.

Before you scream, ‘How Cruel!’ you may like to know that Liberty Minnie has no health care insurance, government or private, and cannot afford much in the way of doctor bills.  Yet better being in that situation than being under socialized medicine, as in Holland, where the common cost-cutting measure is euthanasia, dealt out by doctors who no longer even pretend to care about the patients’ wishes.  Organizations of disabled people in Holland recommend their members wear wrist-bands declaring their desire not to be killed in case of hospitalization.

The best sort of health care is when you pay your doctor yourself. The more often this can happen, the better for us all, since it’s harder to justify denying care to a charity or insurance patient that self-paying patients get.  Self-paying patients also cost less to the doctor since there is no insurance paperwork.

The way to help more people to be able to pay for routine health care on their own steam is to cut malpractice insurance costs. Lawyers like John Edwards got rich from suits claiming that babies with cerebral palsy are created by doctors not performing Caesarian sections quick enough. The millions of dollars generated by these suits went largely to the lawyers, but the costs made malpractice insurance rates skyrocket.

So that if any idealistic young doctors want to open up a medical clinic where they will charge the poor patients lower fees, they can’t afford to.  The malpractice insurance makes their overhead too high.  So we all have to go to doctors who are cogs in a big medical machine.

And I suppose if lawmakers on the state level decide to try to fix this, the big bad federal judges will step in and forbid it— another reason to vote ONLY for those candidates who understand what the real constitutional role of the judges and Supreme Court is all about.

Palestinian Terrorists released, Gilad Shalit still held captive

Remember captive Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit? He’s still being held captive— ask your favorite news channel why they never mention him any more.

But cheer up— the Israelis are setting free 29 Palestinian terrorists. Is this any way to run a war on terror???

Why is the US pressuring our friends, the democratic Israelis, to negotiate with terrorists, give up their land, and drag Israeli settlers from their lawfully purchased homes so that the Palestinians can have a Jew-free state….. Why aren’t we going after the terrorists instead?

For a viewpoint from Israel, check out the post ‘Defenseless’ from the Dry Bones Blog.