Bad Deeds for 4-30-2009

Candidate for Georgia Governorship Says He’d Kill His Own Son to Secede from U. S. – A Georgia candidate for governor says he has found God and he’s ready to sacrifice his own son in an effort to get his state to secede from the union. In an interview, he indicated he’d kill his own son to dissolve the United States (in an effort to overturn Roe v. Wade).

Neal Horsley made national headlines when he posted the names, phone numbers and addresses of abortion doctors online. His “Nuremberg Files” website also crossed off the names of doctors as they were killed.

He said, “I contend this is really about people’s ability to believe in God. When it comes to that place, when you’re talking about God’s plan to protect himself, then the lives of people become, really, almost irrelevant… in the degree that they result in Him being glorified. That’s the nature of the truth.”
One more thing. … He also has admitted having sex with a mule.

 

Churchgoers More Likely to Back Torture, Survey Finds – The more often Americans go to church, the more likely they are to support the torture of suspected terrorists, according to a new analysis by the Pew Research Center.

More than half of people who attend services at least once a week — 54 percent — said the use of torture against suspected terrorists is “often” or “sometimes” justified. Only 42 percent of people who “seldom or never” go to services agreed, according the analysis released Wednesday by the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life.

White evangelical Protestants were the religious group most likely to say torture is often or sometimes justified — more than 6 in 10 supported it. People unaffiliated with any religious organization were least likely to back it. Only 4 in 10 of them did.

 

Pat Robertson Urges His Callers to Crash Homeland Security Hotline – Pat Robertson, on The 700 Club yesterday, got in on the collective right-wing teeth-gnashing over that Department of Homeland Security bulletin on the threat posed by right-wing extremists in America. You know, the controversy that’s been demonstrated to be a lot of hot air — not to mention a terribly revealing one about how mainstream right-wingers see themselves.

Ladies and gentlemen, I want you to do something about it. If that doesn’t get you excited, I don’t know what would. And I want you to call a number. This is the Department of Homeland Security. [Reads phone number]

 

DSCC & DCCC Ban Fundraising From PACs and Lobbyists for Only One Day – The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee and the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee have chosen to accept President Obama’s ban on fundraising from PACs and lobbyists, but only for June 18 — the day he headlines a fundraiser for them.

This isn’t just hypocritical — it defies common sense that you’d think the public would believe this was a principled stand against special-interest influence.

For 364 days a year, the rules would allow members of Congress to leave a hearing about regulating Wall Street and then walk straight to the DSCC and DCCC offices to “dial for dollars” from Wall Street lobbyists who want more bailout money and less accountability to taxpayers. Most Americans would find that conflict of interest repulsive.

Call on the DSCC & DCCC to ban PAC and lobbyist contributions 365 days a year, just as President Obama did.

 

Fossil-Fuel Industry Ignored Its Scientists on Climate Change – For more than a decade the Global Climate Coalition, a group representing industries with profits tied to fossil fuels, led an aggressive lobbying and public relations campaign against the idea that emissions of heat-trapping gases could lead to global warming.

“The role of greenhouse gases in climate change is not well understood,” the coalition said in a scientific “backgrounder” provided to lawmakers and journalists through the early 1990s, adding that “scientists differ” on the issue.

But a document filed in a federal lawsuit demonstrates that even as the coalition worked to sway opinion, its own scientific and technical experts were advising that the science backing the role of greenhouse gases in global warming could not be refuted.

“The scientific basis for the Greenhouse Effect and the potential impact of human emissions of greenhouse gases such as CO2 on climate is well established and cannot be denied,” the experts wrote in an internal report compiled for the coalition in 1995.

Some environmentalists have compared the tactic to that once used by tobacco companies, which for decades insisted that the science linking cigarette smoking to lung cancer was uncertain. By questioning the science on global warming, these environmentalists say, groups like the Global Climate Coalition were able to sow enough doubt to blunt public concern about a consequential issue and delay government action.

George Monbiot, a British environmental activist and writer, said that by promoting doubt, industry had taken advantage of news media norms requiring neutral coverage of issues, just as the tobacco industry once had.

“They didn’t have to win the argument to succeed,” Mr. Monbiot said, “only to cause as much confusion as possible.”

(Summary: You were lied to.)

Whether or not an effective global warming bill lands on President Obama’s desk in 2009 may depend on the actions of 34 subcommittee members over the next week or two. The opposition may be morally bankrupt, but their political coffers are overflowing. Global warming deniers are spending hundreds of millions on lobbying and advertising aimed at confusing the public and scaring legislators. More than 2,000 top corporate lobbyists are on Capitol Hill doing whatever it takes to stop global warming action. What do we have? The truth. And you.

If you haven’t already, please send an email to your House Representative today.

 

Sheriff Detains Mother for Over an Hour for Minor Traffic Violation While Her Children Watch in Horror – In Maricopa County, Arizona, a mother with two small children in the car was pulled over for a minor traffic violation. Armed deputies in ski masks detained her for over an hour while her children watched in horror, not knowing what was happening to their mother or what would happen to them. The whole event was caught on tape. Even worse, the Sheriff in this small town has a long track record of racial profiling and civil rights violations in the name of immigration enforcement. With over 2,700 lawsuits against him, a history of virulently anti-Latino and anti-immigrant tactics, and 40,000 felony warrants outstanding in his jurisdiction, Sheriff Arpaio has fostered a climate in which real criminals roam free while his deputies cross the line by using tactics that violate civil rights in the name of immigration enforcement

No matter where you stand on the immigration issue, mothers and children should never be treated this way.

 

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Regards,

Jim