Free Republic

St. Sabina's website continues to go after political opponents: Criminalizing gun ownership encouraged, State Reps. and Senators who support Second Amendment are targeted 6/2/2008 12:00:00 PM -CCI In spite of the so-called "agreement" between Cardinal George and Rev. Pfleger, stating that the embattled pastor of St. Sabina's would refrain from all political activism, the web site for St. Sabina's continues to be engaged in politics. A long time opponent of the Second Amendment to the Constitution, Rev. Pfleger attracted national attention last year (which was his goal) when he and Jesse Jackson were arrested after invading a gun shop and...

Dear Senator Obama: Our common denomination, the United Church of Christ, has a suddenly serious legal and financial problem with the Internal Revenue Service. You, personally, are the cause of this problem. Candidly? I think you owe it to those of us who are your fellow congregants to help repair the damage that you have done. ...UNSURPRISINGLY, ALL OF THIS resulted in a complaint being filed with the IRS following your presentation. In addition to your speech and the stories featured by the UCC's own website, the complaint cites numerous media accounts describing your appearance as a campaign event. This...

It appears only one side of the abortion debate was allowed.   Shannon Nixson, a case manager and graduate student, was fired this month from the YWCA of Greater Cincinnati after she invited a pro-life speaker to address pregnant women at the club. Nixson said she was allowed to recruit speakers on both sides of several other issues, but only one view of the abortion debate was welcomed. Nixson asked a representative of Life Issues Institute to present a pro-life perspective during a seminar on employment and literacy. “Within the next couple of days, I was told that I was terminated,...

A packet for educators issued by the Public Broadcasting System (PBS) in conjunction with the NOVA program "Judgment Day: Intelligent Design on Trial" encourages teaching practices that are probably unconstitutional, a conservative organization stated on Tuesday. "The NOVA/PBS teaching guide encourages the injection of religion into classroom teaching about evolution in a way that likely would violate current Supreme Court precedents about the First Amendment's Establishment Clause," said John West, vice president for public policy and legal affairs at the Discovery Institute, in a news release. The 22-page document is a companion piece to the two-hour NOVA docudrama, "Judgment Day,"...

Organizers claim they didn’t intend to come off as secretive "It won’t happen again." Given the uproar over a closed-door meeting in which Clinton delegates gathered at the Parkway Ballroom on Wednesday for a pep talk from former President Bill Clinton, I’ll bet it won’t. Traci Otey Blount, a spokeswoman for the Hillary Clinton campaign, moved swiftly to douse the fire storm caused when media were locked out of a meeting billed as a “People’s Rally.” A gaggle of cameramen and reporters were forced to stand in chilly temperatures for three hours across the street, while a predominantly black crowd...

Everyone knows the potent force of the Christian right in American politics. But since the mid-1990s, an increasingly influential religious movement has arisen on the left, mostly escaping the national press's notice. This new religious left does not expend its political energies on the cultural concerns that primarily motivate conservative evangelicals. Instead, working mostly at the state and local level, and often in lockstep with unions, its ministers, priests, rabbis, and laity exert a major, sometimes decisive, influence in campaigns to enforce a "living wage," to help unions organize, and to block the expansion of nonunionized businesses like Wal-Mart. The...

WASHINGTON - Rep. Rosa L. DeLauro and 13 other Catholic members of Congress released a letter Tuesday calling on Catholic bishops to help end the war in Iraq. "As Catholic members of Congress, we stand in unison with the Catholic Church in opposition to the war in Iraq," the Democratic 3rd District congresswoman said in a statement. "Yet to attain the ideal of peace, we must not only speak the words, we must take action." As a result, she and her colleagues sent a letter to the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, or USCCB, urging it to "mobilize Catholic opinion...

Florida evangelist Bill Keller says he was making a spiritual -- not political -- statement when he warned the 2.4 million subscribers to his Internet prayer ministry that ``if you vote for Mitt Romney, you are voting for Satan!'' But the Washington-based advocacy group Americans United for Separation of Church and State says the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) should revoke the 501(c)(3) tax-exempt status of Bill Keller Ministries, nonetheless.

There’s a foul wind blowing off Cape Cod. The clean-energy project known as Cape Wind makes more sense than ever, what with the mess in the Middle East and the earth getting warmer by the minute. But resistance to the proposed wind-farm — which would place 130 windmills in Nantucket Sound and provide up to 75 percent of the Cape’s energy at any given time — proves that it really isn’t easy being green. Since Cape Wind was first proposed in 2001, the project has made plenty of powerful enemies (see the sidebar “Enemies in High Places”), including Ted Kennedy,...

Last month, Los Angeles Times columnist George Skelton likened the Catholic Church in Los Angeles to "an ugly old political attack dog" and suggested that the state legislature reexamine its tax-exempt status for property. Why? ... Meanwhile, presidential candidate Barack Obama made an appearance at South-Central Los Angeles' First AME Church last Sunday (4/29/07). According to the Times, Obama addressed the congregation and "drew a sustained ovation when he rebuked the Bush administration." The paper covered the event with over 1,100 words and a very generous photo. (See an image of the article here.) In addition, KTLA5 television in Los...

<p>OVERLAND PARK, Kan. -- A recent Sunday found Tina Kolm changing her morning routine. Instead of attending a Unitarian Universalist service, she was at the Lenexa Christian Center, paying close attention to a conservative minister's sermon about the importance of amending the U.S. Constitution to ban same-sex "marriage."</p>

BOSTON - Howard Dean (news - web sites) isn't running for president anymore, but you'd never know it from the reception he got Sunday night. Speaking to a crowd of young voters at a party sponsored by Rock the Vote and Democratic Gain, Dean was welcomed like a rock star. He could barely get through the crowd. Once he reached the stage, with his shirt sleeves characteristically rolled up above the elbows, he was greeted with chants of "Dean, Dean, Dean" echoing back to his rallies this past winter, when the former Vermont governor was running for the Democratic nomination....

Free spirits frolic at Fremont festivities By Diane Brooks Seattle Times staff reporter It was a great day to be naked. But we only can hope those bicyclists mixed some sunscreen with all that psychedelic body paint and glitter that so vividly depicted the flamboyant heart of Fremont. Seattle welcomed summer yesterday with its 16th annual Solstice Parade, a joyous, 75-minute celebration of all things wild and pagan. "I love it, because it's not 64 big sparkly floats with beauty queens on top waving, and people politely applauding when they go by," said volunteer traffic controller Chelsea Teller, who coordinated...

Documentary film-maker Michael Moore won the Palme d'Or at the Cannes Film Festival for Fahrenheit 911, not because the awards jury wanted to endorse his politics, but because it was "the best film at the festival" according to festival jurist Quentin Tarantino. Never mind that Moore immediately said he hoped his film "would affect the outcome of the 2004 election." We are still supposed to believe that the film was judged on its artistic merits, and nothing else. Add this to some other remarkable facts that we are supposed to believe about the "non-partisan" nature of other efforts to enlighten...

The year was 1961. The fledgling Beatles couldn't settle on a bass player, President John F. Kennedy was famously asking what you could do for your country, and Vietnam was just a tiny country in muggy Southeast Asia. Somewhere in the halls of St. Paul's School, in secluded Concord, New Hampshire, a couple of teenage guys with the garage-rock ethos found in so many other suburban towns decided to start a band. No, this is not a rock-and-roll success story complete with screaming girls and chart-topping hits — quite the opposite. It's about a band of prep-schoolers who pressed 500...