February 2006

Ogre’s back, with a particularly ugly and ignorant example of using the ‘war on terror’ as a cover for the worst kind of religious bigotry.

Sheikh Ismail Nawahda, preaching in Jerusalem, directing all followers of Islam around the world:

”…unite all the Moslems in the world against the infidels…[to] restore the Moslem dictatorship using a system of small groups around the world”

How much more clear does that need to be? People who are of the religion of Islam are actively working to overthrow the American government. If you are of the Islam religion and are not, you are disobeying your own leaders. Either way, Islam is not about freedom of religion, it’s about treason.

Islam in America should be declared what it is: a treasonous organization that exists to overthrow the government. You have a right to freedom of religion, but you do not have the right to organize with the sole purpose of destroying the government.

News flash, Ogre: Christianity isn’t about ‘freedom of religion’ either. It’s about enforcing a specific set of beliefs. That’s what all religion is, at the core. Believe in a given credo, or suffer the consequences. Much of what passes for ‘religion’ throughout history has been bitterly oppposed to freedom.

Ogre doesn’t tell us how he arrived at the conclusion that Sheikh Ismail Nawahda is necessarily a “leader” in Islam. How does he arrive at the conclusion that all Muslims follow the same leaders? Ogre doesn’t say.

Nor can he explain how an organization is “declared treasonous”. And perhaps most importantly, he doesn’t explain how branding all American Muslims as traitors will in any way assist in the fight against terrorism.

No, this isn’t about ‘winning the war on terror’ for Ogre and his fellow Christian soldiers. It’s about spreading hatred and bigotry. Terrorism is a difficult problem that will be with us for a long time. I guarantee you it won’t be solved by those who employ simple-minded notions that lump all Muslims into the same pigeonhole.

Ogre’s little tantrum is a textbook example of religious hatred and intellectual laziness at its worst. It’s about as far from the American ideals of religious freedom and tolerance as one can get.

Via TPMCafe comes news out of Ohio: The Akron beacon Journal reports that State Sen. Robert Hagan will introduce a bill “that would ban households with one or more Republican voters from adopting children or acting as foster parents”. Read the rest of this entry »

Jay Stephenson demonstrates that his ignorance of history can’t stop his bloviating:

Jeff Mittman repeated the popular false mantra of comparing a program of listening in on the telephone conversations of American citizens talking to suspected members of al Qaeda to illegal wiretapping of Dr. Martin Luther King.

“In the 60’s we spied on Dr. King illegally and in response we passed the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA), which is binding on the president. His spying program is not legal.”

Freedom of speech is a beautiful thing. Among many of its glories is that raving moonbats can demonstrate in public and make total idiots out of themselves.

Alas, in this case the total idiot is Jay Stephenson himself. FISA was, in fact, passed in part in reaction to the King wiretaps. As documented in one of the Church Committee reports:

The FBI collected information about Dr. King’s plans and activities through an extensive surveillance program, employing nearly every intelligence-gathering technique at the Bureau’s disposal. Wiretaps, which were initially approved by Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy, were maintained on Dr. King’s home telephone from October 1963 until mid-1965; the SCLC headquarter’s telephones were covered by wiretaps for an even longer period. Phones in the homes and offices of some of Dr. King’s close advisers were also wiretapped. The FBI has acknowledged 16 occasions on which microphones were hidden in Dr. King’s hotel and motel rooms in an “attempt” to obtain information about the “private activities of King and his advisers” for use to “completely discredit” them.

And it was, in fact, as a reaction to the excesses documented by the Church Committeee that FISA was enacted.

Freedom of speech is indeed a beautiful thing. It allows Jay Stephenson to demonstrate his abysmal ignorance of history, and his preference for cheap shots over informed debate.

A favorite tactic of the radical right is the lie by omission. I ran across an example of this recently by a blogger who calls himself ‘Ogre’.

Ogre rails against an editorial in the Charlotte Observer that calls for stricter standards regarding tailpipe emissions from automobiles. He’s entitled to his opinion, of course. Unfortunately, Ogre chooses to lie while making his point: Read the rest of this entry »

Jay Stephenson once again chooses to lie to his readers.

This is pure propaganda from the ACLU. Congress has realized the absolute necessity of the program designed to listen in on conversations where one end is a suspected Al Qaeda operative. The ACLU rebuking the program is a clear admission that they have no regard for the safety of America, and want to completely eliminate the program.

When Jay says “the program”, he means all surveillance of international communications, with or without warrants. How does the ACLU define the program? [PDF file] Read the rest of this entry »

Jay Stephenson is lying to his readers at StopTheACLU.com:

The [UN report on Guantanamo Bay] had an extensive list of torture including handling them roughly, not allowing them to starve to death , restraining them, leaving them by themselves (solitary confinement), discomforting room temperatures, bringing dogs to bark at them, and making them sleep on non-fluffed pillows….without the complimentary mints.

This, of course, is not what the report said. What did it say? [PDF file] Read the rest of this entry »

Glenn Greenwald makes the case that the right wing in this country is no longer made up of true conservatives — but instead is a cult of personality that worships George W. Bush

It used to be the case that in order to be considered a “liberal” or someone “of the Left,” one had to actually ascribe to liberal views on the important policy issues of the day – social spending, abortion, the death penalty, affirmative action, immigration, “judicial activism,” hate speech laws, gay rights, utopian foreign policies, etc. etc. These days, to be a “liberal,” such views are no longer necessary.

Now, in order to be considered a “liberal,” only one thing is required – a failure to pledge blind loyalty to George W. Bush. The minute one criticizes him is the minute that one becomes a “liberal,” regardless of the ground on which the criticism is based. And the more one criticizes him, by definition, the more “liberal” one is. Whether one is a “liberal”—or, for that matter, a “conservative”—is now no longer a function of one’s actual political views, but is a function purely of one’s personal loyalty to George Bush.

…A movement which has as its shining lights a woman who advocates the death of her political opponents, another woman who is a proponent of concentration camps, a magazine which advocates the imprisonment of journalists who expose government actions of dubious legality, all topped off by a President who believes he has the power to secretly engage in activities which the American people, through their Congress, have made it a crime to engage in, is a movement motivated by lots of different things. Political ideology isn’t one of them.

One has only to visit the most popular right-wing blogs to see how true this all is. Testify, Glenn.