Free Republic

ACLU, atheist in 16-year battle to remove it The San Diego City Council voted this week to allow voters to decide the fate of the historic Mt. Soledad Cross overlooking the Pacific Ocean in La Jolla. The vote represented the newest chapter in a long line of legal battles to remove the cross, led by ACLU attorney James McElroy, who represents an atheist seeking to remove the Christian symbol from public lands.

FAIZABAD, Afghanistan (Reuters) -- A group of Afghan Muslim clerics have threatened to call for a holy war against the United States in three days unless it hands over military interrogators reported to have desecrated the Quran. The warning on Sunday came after 16 Afghans were killed and more than 100 hurt last week in the worst anti-U.S. protests across the country since U.S. forces invaded in 2001 to oust the Taliban for sheltering Osama bin Laden and his al Qaeda network. The clerics in the northeastern province of Badakhshan said they wanted U.S. President George W. Bush to handle...

“In fact, the breadth and extent of the anti-evolutionary movement that has spread almost unnoticed across the country should force American politicians to think twice about how their public expressions of religious belief are beginning to affect education and science. The deeply religious nature of the United States should not be allowed to stand in the way of the thirst for knowledge or the pursuit of science. Once it does, it won’t be long before the American scientific community—which already has trouble finding enough young Americans to fill its graduate schools—ceases to lead the world.” That is the editorial voice...

. FReeper help needed: To help promote FReeper AnnaZ's BRAND NEW SaveOurSeal.net video, I need some ONLINE images of the Taliban blowing up those Buddha statues. Some time VERY SOON, AnnaZ will be releasing a BRAND NEW short video,which will open with VIDEO images of their destruction by Muslim fanatics.This new video will be about the ACLU fanatics who recently forced Los Angeles County to remove a tiny cross from their official County Seal, and how this ANTI-religious fervor is much more DANGEROUS, and much more WIDESPREAD than some might think. I would like to use something like THESE images,...

This was not the mother’s first trip to her child’s classroom, where parents regularly volunteered to lead story time. Because it coincided with the holiday season, she thought the ideal story to tell would be the original Christmas story that began nearly 2,000 years ago. But she remembered the memo. Sent weeks earlier, it was a stern reminder by the school principal that children in public schools could not celebrate Christmas. The sensitive kindergarten teacher added in her own handwriting, “It’s that old ‘separation of church and state’ thing.”

Saturday after Thanksgiving is the traditional day to purchase stamps for my annual Christmas card mailing... [snip] So, shortly before noon on that most recent post-turkey day, I sauntered into a neighborhood "U.S. Postal Store," [snip] and headed for the stamps-only section. I quickly found a packed wall of display racks offering a panoply of first-class postage devoted to the various elements of the year-end holiday season, specifically: 1) Christmas, featuring colorful, contemporary designs of Santa Claus with an array of inanimate, secular Yule symbols; 2) Kwanzaa, with not just one but two stamps promoting a totally fabricated "harvest holiday"...

CHRISTMAS IS NOT THE TARGET: Much has been written and discussed in talk radio and on the internet this holiday season as to why certain decisions are being made when it comes to certain symbols of Christmas. I have seen or heard stories along these lines on all of the following topics just in the past 24 hours... 1. TARGET vs. Salvation Army 2. Macys banning "Merry Christmas" 3. Bloomingdales banning "Merry Christmas" 4. The Denver Parade of Lights banning "Christmas" floats 5. Maplewood Schools in New Jersey banning all Christmas and Hannukah music from its Winter Concert. 6. Bloomberg proclaiming the NYC no longer...

Just in time for Christmas, America's two largest news magazines devote this week's cover stories to debunking the story of Jesus' birth. Among the conclusions in Time and Newsweek: Jesus was born in Nazareth, not Bethlehem; there is little evidence of three kings following a star, and the story of the virgin birth may have been borrowed. "The Nativity saga is neither fully fanciful nor fully factual but a layered narrative of early tradition and enduring theology," Newsweek writes in examining the Sunday-school version of the birth of Christ. This may be unwelcome "news" to most Americans. A Newsweek poll...

TARGET THE GRINCH:And the beat goes on... According to this morning's USA Today, Target Inc.  is sticking to its plan to kick the Salvation Army to the curb throughout this holiday season. For those of you late to this story, Target stores had long allowed the Salvation Army to be the only charity that raised funds outside their stores using their famous red kettles and the cheerful sound of Christmas Bells. This year the good will from the red bulls-eye came to an end.  According to the USA Today the impact will leave the Salvation Army short about 9 million dollars...

Two dozen San Francisco schoolkids sporting white turtlenecks and Santa hats got a very un-Christmaslike civics lesson the other day when they showed up at Union Square hoping to delight Christmas shoppers with holiday carols. "They just wanted to set up next to the Christmas tree and sing,'' said Donna Vargas, one of the parents who escorted the fifth- and sixth-graders from San Francisco Day School on Friday's outing. Instead, they got the boot. Seems they didn't have a city permit -- so after a brief run-in with the park's security, the kids were shooed away. "How can children not...

Denver's holiday traditions include a Christmas Parade and the lighting of the City and County Building in downtown Denver.Denver Mayor John Hickenlooper recently announced that the phrase "MERRY CHRISTMAS" on the outside of the building will be changed to "HAPPY HOLIDAYS," in yet another politically correct attack on the institution of Christmas. And while they're at it, the city is stopping a church group from participating in the annual "Parade of Lights", and singing Christmas Carols.Parade organizers claim that Christmas Carols may be offensive to some people....a church group who wants to march in the Parade of Lights and sing...

HOLIDAY BLUES Christmastime event is no-Christian zone Santa, 'holy homosexuals' OK for parade, but no floats with direct religious themes -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Posted: December 2, 2004 1:00 a.m. Eastern By Joe Kovacs © 2004 WorldNetDaily.com In the latest skirmish over Christmas in America, a Christian group is not allowed to participate in Denver's annual Parade of Lights, because church members sought to sing yuletide hymns and proclaim a "Merry Christmas" message on their float. However, the event, now in its 30th year, will include homosexual American Indians, Kung Fu artisans, belly dancers and, of course, Santa Claus. "I think there's an...

MY CHRISTMAS CRUSADE  By Michelle Malkin   ·   December 02, 2004 02:36 AM The persecution never ends. Denver has launched war against a church group that wanted to march in the city's Christmas parade "Parade of Lights." (I hate, hate, hate that p.c. euphemism.)From the Denver Post: Parade Organizers Say Christmas Carols May Be Offensive To Others Denver Mayor John Hickenlooper recently announced that next year the phrase "Merry Christmas" will be removed from the city building and replaced with "Happy Holidays." And now a church group who wants to march in the Parade of Lights and sing Christmas carols...

Tuesday, November 30, 2004 Pull plug on ACLU Posted: November 30, 20041:00 a.m. Eastern By Joseph Farah © 2004 WorldNetDaily.com The American Civil Liberties Union, the misnamed, extremist persecutors of the Boy Scouts of America, claims to be fighting to end taxpayer support of religious groups. That was the excuse the ACLU used when it targeted the Boy Scouts use of military bases in a case in which the Pentagon caved into the neo-Talibanists of secular humanism. But the dirty little secret the ACLU doesn't want you to know is that it, too, received significant funding of its jihad against Judaism, Christianity...

Tonight on Special Report after the panel had weighed in on the pressing issues of the day, Brian Wilson had the closing "human interest" piece that concerned the National Christmas Tree. Now I understand that the P.C. title for this item is the National Holiday Tree and Wilson acknowledged as much, but he then stated "...but this is FOX and we don't care about P.C. so this is the Nations CHRISTMAS TREE". I about had a stroke! Congratulations to FOX for not caving in to the PC Police and calling it what it is. Merry Christmas everybody!

.S. District Judge Sim Lake ruled today that a Bible displayed in a monument outside the Harris County Civil Courts Building must be removed within 10 days and that the county must pay $41,000 in court costs and attorney fees. Real estate broker and attorney Kay Staley sued the county in federal court to have the monument removed, contending the display violates the First Amendment ban on an establishment of religion. The King James Bible rests under glass inside a 4-foot stone monument on the west side of the Civil Courthouse, 301 Fannin. The monument was constructed with private funds...

WASHINGTON (Reuters) -- President Bush, seeking to mobilize religious conservatives for his reelection campaign, has asked church-going volunteers to turn over church membership directories, campaign officials said on Thursday. In a move sharply criticized both by religious leaders and civil libertarians, the Bush-Cheney campaign has issued a guide listing about two-dozen "duties" and a series of deadlines for organizing support among conservative church congregations. A copy of the guide obtained by Reuters directs religious volunteers to send church directories to state campaign committees, identify new churches that can be organized by the Bush campaign and talk to clergy members about...

Not content with slandering Mel Gibson, the Bible, and Jesus Christ, the media elite are now gearing up to slander even more religious and political figures who profess Jesus Christ as their divine savior. For example, according to the April 5 issue of VARIETY, Harry and Linda Thomason, two of former President Bill Clinton and his wife Hillary’s buddies in Hollywood, are making a movie that will slam those Christians and Republicans who helped the GOP gain control of the United States Congress and stymie the radical liberal, atheist agenda of the Clintons and their supporters. Furthermore, radical maniac Michael...

WASHINGTON - A California atheist told the Supreme Court Wednesday that the words "under God" in the Pledge of Allegiance are unconstitutional and offensive to people who don't believe there is a God. Michael Newdow, who challenged the Pledge of Allegiance on behalf of his daughter, said the court has no choice but to keep it out of public schools. "It's indoctrinating children," he said. "The government is supposed to stay out of religion." But some justices said they were not sure if the words were intended to unite the country, or express religion. Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist noted...

Democrat presidential candidate John Kerry is not sure God is on America's side in the war terrorism. Kerry made the startling comments during the Feb 29 Democrat presidential primary debate in New York City. Elizabeth Bumiller of the New York Times asked Kerry: "President Bush has said that freedom and fear have always been at war, and God is not neutral between them. He's made quite clear in his speeches that he feels God is on America's side. "Is God on America's side?" Kerry replied, "Well, God will -- look, I think -- I believe in God, but I don't...