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Christian protests put Philip Pullman's His Dark Materials film trilogy in doubt By Stephen Adams Last Updated: 1:01pm BST 18/07/2008 The future of the film trilogy based on Phillip Pullman's books His Dark Materials is in doubt after the controversial author said he did not know if the sequel to The Golden Compass would be made. The first in the trilogy, which starred Nicole Kidman and Daniel Craig, was dogged by accusations from American religious groups that it was anti-Catholic and even sought to "destroy God". British author Pullman admitted such objections may have hit US box office sales.... The...

None other than the Rev. Al Sharpton has come to Milwaukee. Well, at least his voice is here. Sharpton’s syndicated radio show recently began broadcasting from noon to 3 p.m. weekdays on WMCS-AM (1290). That’s probably welcome news for some in town; for others, not so much. For some Milwaukeeans, Sharpton is part of the unholy trinity — along with Louis Farrakhan and Jesse Jackson — of outspoken black men who never let white America forget its sad racial past. To others, it’s a welcome relief to have a nationally syndicated African-American radio program with a political focus during daytime...

Christian publisher Zondervan is facing a $60 million federal lawsuit filed by a man who claims he and other homosexuals have suffered based on what the suit claims is a misinterpretation of the Bible.

As Denver dignitaries gathered today for Mayor John Hickenlooper's State of the City address, City Council President Michael Hancock introduced singer Rene Marie to perform the national anthem. But that's not what she did. Instead, Marie performed the song "Lift Ev'ry Voice and Sing," which is also known as the "Black National Anthem." When she finished, the proceedings moved forward, and few seemed to notice that the Star Spangled Banner was never performed. One who did notice was Councilman Charlie Brown, and he took to local talk radio Tuesday afternoon to blast the lack of the nation's anthem at the...

On Friday, Senator Obama warned a cheering audience about the Republicans. “They’re going to try to make you afraid of me. He’s young and inexperienced and he’s got a funny name. And did I mention he’s black?” A few months ago, historian Sean Wilentz dubbed this tactic the “race-baiter card.” Smear your opponents as racists, and if there’s no evidence for the claim, accuse them of using “coded language.” There is no authoritative racial codebook, so the charge is easy to lodge. The campaign need not make such accusations directly, since sympathetic writers will do so. Consider Senator Clinton’s “3...

How far is Barack Obama willing to run from the very same Black nationalism that was fundamental to his victories in so many state Democratic primaries? The nominee-apparent is in pell-mellFireObama flight from everything that does not conform to his own "race-neutral" worldview. Obama's political contradictions compel him to reject his most fervent supporters, and apparently to reexamine his ties to the Black Church as an institution.

Still bitter from his spanking at the hands of Clint Eastwood (background here), conspiracy nut and race-monger Spike Lee is clinging to Barack Obama for revenge. He told a film festival crowd this week that he has gathered 1,000 hours of footage of his Obamessiah on the campaign trail and will produce a documentary about the candidate. The dour director instantly cheered up. Via SilverDocs, Lee gloats: Discussing his Hurricane Katrina epic When the Levees Broke, Lee referenced the current flooding in the midwest and said, “The infrastructure of this country is crumbling, and money’s going elsewhere.” He paused, then...

BET founder Bob Johnson, despite his consistent support of Hillary CObama’s election as President during a segment on Wednesday’s "American Morning." "I believe that if Senator Obama leads this country the way he ran the primary, it will become a historic event for African-Americans, probably greater than the Emancipation Proclamation, which was signed in 1863."linton, placed an unequivocal importance on Barack

Senator Barack Obama is now the Democratic nominee for President of the United States of America. This seems like a good time to consider who this man is. Here are some quotes from his autobiographies Dreams of My Father and The Audacity of Hope that might help Americans and the rest of the world get a sense of this man who is one general election away from the Oval Office. Before you read them consider that Henry Kissinger once remarked that presidents come into office and leave office the the same men. The job is too demanding to permit opportunities...

Trailer Because it's billed as a more personal project for Mark Pellington after a string of interesting, idiosyncratic thrillers ("Arlington Road," "The Mothman Prophecies"), "Henry Poole Is Here" is all the more disappointing. Pic's tendency to lecture on the power of faith and religion and on the demerits of science seems to assume an almost childlike audience that needs to be spoon-fed Pablum. This tale of a single man whose medical death sentence is reversed in part by a neighborhood of believers won't advance the profile of the always-likable Luke Wilson, and Christian moviegoers will have to show up in...

Noteworthy, not because this is the first time he’s said something this vile but because it’s not. He floated it to our favorite liberal in February during an interview on Fox News radio (and, sad to say, wasn’t called on it) and thought so highly of his bon mot that he recycled it for his new book. Either no one’s taken him aside to explain how disgusting it is or someone has taken him aside but he thinks it’s so important and righteous that he’s going to keep deploying it anyway. I don’t know which is worse. Bear in mind,...

In an attempt to explain how race will impact Democrat presidential candidate Barack Obama's run for the White House, Newsweek has created a "Racial Resentment Index" exclusively for white people without measuring such biases of non-whites.

But the real reason for Obama’s extraordinary freakout is that he fears the release of the videotape, reported here, of Michelle Obama in the pulpit of Rev. Jeremiah Wright’s church railing against “whitey.” And we don’t mean Whitey Ford. Four Republican sources have told me that the tape exists. I’ve also been informed that Karl Rove and his allies have a copy of it and are using it to raise funds for independent expenditure groups. The tape, I’m told, will be disclosed as the GOP October Surprise. It’s a ticking time bomb. And I’ve learned that a right-wing Republican billionaire...

Politico.com has a .pdf copy of Michelle Robinson Obama’s thesis in sociology. [http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0208/8642.html] The content is entirely consistent with Barack Obama’s Black identity politics, if not outright Black Nationalist politics, as described in Dreams From My Father, as well as Michelle Obama’s statement that she is proud of our country only when her husband, who can’t be bothered to show respect for our National Anthem, is running for President. It is no surprise that efforts were made to conceal this thesis from the public until after the election. Earlier in my college career, there was no doubt in my mind...

My mother was conceived from a rape. Her mother was a light-skinned Black woman, who at the age of 19 saw her family burned to death in a fire. While she was recovering from shock in a hospital, a White doctor on staff had his way with her. Out of that horrific act, my mother was born. The doctor was never punished and disappeared into the dustbin of history. My mother was subsequently adopted by a Black family and my biological grandmother, victim of the crime, was rendered insane in a mental institution for the rest of her life. Ironically...

Maher to Apologize for Calling Pope a 'Nazi' By Melanie Hunter-Omar CNSNews.com Senior Editor April 17, 2008 (CNSNews.com) - Liberal talk show host Bill Maher, whose controversial comments about the pope drew fire from the Catholic community, is planning to apologize Friday night for falsely accusing Pope Benedict XVI of being a Nazi, the Catholic League announced Thursday. Catholic League President Bill Donohue received a phone call Thursday from an HBO executive regarding comments Maher made last Friday on HBO's "Real Time With Bill Maher." As Cybercast News Service previously reported, Donohue said Maher "lied when he said the Pope...

Even though the topic on the agenda for Wednesday’s Senate Appropriations Committee hearing was Iraq war funding, Sen. Robert Byrd (D-W.Va.) grasped from the moment he arrived that he was the day’s most important subject — and he was ready to make his case. He arrived on time, wore a crisp suit and entered the room smiling. When he left, after two hours, “Shut up” were the only words he had for his critics. He seemed to pass the test, convincing three Senate Democratic leaders that he’s fit to continue as chairman. Byrd knows that he is the most closely...

The subject of race is all over the media headlines. Reverend Jeremiah Wright told it like it is and conservative America could not take the strong medicine. Sen. Barack Obama had to prepare his greatest speech to address the frenzy that was and is taking place about it. Imagine, Black people having to explain to White America that there is a racial problem in this nation. That alone signifies the degree of importance this issue has. Denial can be the worst enemy and biggest problem. Most recently, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice had to weigh in on the issue. She...

My experiences at Princeton have made me far more aware of my 'blackness' than ever before," the future Mrs. Obama wrote in her thesis introduction. "I have found that at Princeton, no matter how liberal and open-minded some of my white professors and classmates try to be toward me, I sometimes feel like a visitor on campus; as if I really don't belong. Regardless of the circumstances underwhich I interact with whites at Princeton, it often seems as if, to them, I will always be black first and a student second."

And now to add to the ever-lengthening list of Obamessiah apologists comes TV and Radio talker Alan Colmes to say that Barack Obama is right, Middle America IS filled with racist, overly religious, gun-nuts. On his LiberalLand blog (the formerly secret blog he was hiding from the greater world), Sean Hannity's co-host said the following: And just where is he wrong? Pointing out why people may be bitter or frustrated, that there is xenophobia, that people sometimes cling to religion or feel paranoid about the government and embrace guns doesn’t mean you hate or disdain a portion of the population.First...

TERRE HAUTE, Ind. - Sen. Barack Obama was criticized Friday by his two fellow presidential candidates for statements he made recently at a San Francisco fundraiser that could be viewed as derogatory toward rural America. "You go into these small towns in Pennsylvania and, like a lot of small towns in the Midwest, the jobs have been gone now for 25 years and nothing's replaced them," Obama said Sunday, according to the Huffington Post web site. "And they fell through the Clinton administration, and the Bush administration, and each successive administration has said that somehow these communities are gonna regenerate...

The Huffington Post's Mayhill Fowler reports that, at that same San Francisco fundraiser where Obama revealed his previously unknown college sojourn to Pakistan, the junior senator from Illinois seemed to try to get inside the mind of small towners in Pennsylvania, with a dose of sociology and a dollop of dime-store psychology. "You go into these small towns in Pennsylvania and, like a lot of small towns in the Midwest, the jobs have been gone now for 25 years and nothing's replaced them," Obama said. "And they fell through the Clinton Administration, and the Bush Administration, and each successive administration...

Hillary Clinton and John McCain both ripped into Barack Obama Friday for reportedly saying residents of small-town America “cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren’t like them” out of bitterness over lost jobs, a remark his opponents interpreted as arrogant...

Durham, N.C. — Attorneys for three former Duke University lacrosse players filed a motion this week asking a judge to lift a stay that keeps them from suing former Durham District Attorney Mike Nifong. Nifong filed for Chapter 7 bankruptcy in January, listing a debt of $180.3 million and David Evans, Collin Finnerty and Reade Seligmann – as well as three other players who filed suit – as unsecured creditors, each owed $30 million. Attorneys for Evans, Finnerty and Seligmann, however, say in the April 8 filing that bankruptcy was a tactic he used to avoid a federal civil rights...

An invitation to a "diversity workshop" sent to Sandia Labs employees last week by labs management has drawn complaints because of its suggestion that white people are inherently racist. "Recent studies suggest whites' lack of awareness about other cultures has to do with whites' commitment to maintaining higher social status, or 'white privilege,' '' the invitation said. It also said whites "are likely to persist in racist behaviors unless persuaded to abolish the privileges they receive as members of the white race." Sandia staff received a dozen calls from employees upset about the wording, labs spokesman Michael Padilla said. He...

Manhattan grand jury has subpoenaed the university records of the controversial black Columbia Teachers College professor who found a noose hanging from her office door - signaling that the investigation is broadening to examine possible links between the teacher, her closest friends and the racially charged incident, The Post has learned. According to sources, the subpoenas obtained recently by the NYPD Hate Crimes Task Force and prosecutors demanded the college hand over a laundry list of records pertaining to embattled professor Madonna Constantine, whose colleague found a 4-foot hangman's noose on her office doorknob last October. The incident happened at...

ENJOY THE MOCKING ON YOUTUBE The words from Obama's mentor of 20 years will echo through the campaign - God damn America! For the whole world to see, this is racism. This is hate. This is what keeps dividing us. Now he retires to a $1.6 million new home. Hasn't America been horrible for this angry race-baiting America hater? Filling your congregation with hate from the pulpit is evil, "Reverend" Wright.

Leave it to liberals to pile on Sen. John McCain with cheap shots about his age, and we're not talking making jokes about him serving in the Civil War or what not. Mocking John McCain's age, MSNBC's Keith Olbermann imagined that the senator could easily segue from talking about foreign policy or the economy to talking about "buying more Depends or something like that." (h/t Conservative Punk) "You can dissassociate yourself from that remark if you wish," Olbermann immediately added in his exchange with Rachel Maddow of the liberal Air America radio network. Yesterday NewsBusters noted a liberal blogger who...

A year ago, Barack Obama addressed a group in Selma, AL commemorating the 1965 voting rights march. He credited the event with giving his parents the idea that they could have a child. The result was him--Barack Obama, Child of Destiny. The only problem is he was born in 1961. "What happened in Selma, Alabama and Birmingham also stirred the conscience of the nation...This young man named Barack Obama...came over to this country. He met this woman...(who) had a good idea there was some craziness going on because they looked at each other and they decided...it might...be possible for us...

FOX News Poll: More Than Half Believe Obama Doesn't Share Views of Pastor Wright Thursday , March 20, 2008 By Dana Blanton Fifty-seven percent of Americans do not believe Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama shares the controversial views of his former spiritual mentor the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, while about one in four (24 percent) believes he does share the Wright’s views. And a sizable minority has doubts about Obama because of his pastor’s comments, according to a new FOX News poll. Republicans (36 percent) are more likely than independents (20 percent) and Democrats (17 percent) to think Obama shares Wright’s...

On Dec. 12, 2002, Obama, then serving as an Illinois state senator and filling in as host of the Cliff Kelley radio show on WVON, challenged the Republican Party to demand Lott's resignation. "It seems to be that we can forgive a 100-year-old senator for some of the indiscretion of his youth, but, what is more difficult to forgive is the current president of the U.S. Senate (Lott) suggesting we had been better off if we had followed a segregationist path in this country after all of the battles and fights for civil rights and all the work that we...

Barack Obama took the stage this morning to give what was billed as a "major speech on race." It was, of course, an attempt to rescue his campaign from the revelation that his so-called spiritual mentor, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, espouses a virulently anti-American and antiwhite worldview called "black liberation theology." <--snip--> What Obama is evading is that this "profoundly distorted view" is not just some passing emotion. It is what Wright himself, in the "talking points" page of his congregation's Web site, describes as "systematized black liberation theology." As we noted yesterday, Wright credits James Cone of New York's...

I have seen a like intro referencing crying at several left wing message boards a dozen times already. OK, this is what we are up against people. Crybabies that start crying over political speeches! Unbeleivable! Just who ARE these people that would cry over a political speech given solely because the guy was backed into a corner over an issue? To CRY over it?

At the end of a Good Morning America segment today about Barack Obama's pastor, the Rev. Dr. Jeremiah A. Wright, Jr., an Obama campaign representative complained that John McCain's pastor had not been similarly "vetted." If that's true, then ABC or some other media outlet surely should and will do so. Let's imagine that upon vetting, McCain's pastor is found to have made statements that were the mirror-image of those that Rev. Wright has made. How long would McCain remain a viable candidate? Judge for yourself, based on Rev. Wright's statements as exposed in the GMA segment that was the...

The recent criticism of hate speech on campus is entirely appropriate. But we ought to make one exception to this rule: the “religious right,” a retrograde coterie of unattractive common folk who seek to impose their irrational beliefs on the rest of us. These fundamentalists lie awake at night, plotting the imposition of the truths they have received by revelation from God. God has decreed the necessity of prohibiting abortion and gay marriage, lest the land be scourged by His wrath, so the unquestioning hordes of Jesus-freaks flood the polls on election day. The few who are at Yale (here...

CHICAGO - In his first major public address since a cancer crisis, Nation of Islam Minister Louis Farrakhan said Sunday that presidential candidate Barack Obama is the "hope of the entire world" that the U.S. will change for the better. The 74-year-old Farrakhan, addressing an estimated crowd of 20,000 people at the annual Saviours' Day celebration, never outrightly endorsed Obama but spent most of the nearly two-hour speech praising the Illinois senator. "This young man is the hope of the entire world that America will change and be made better," he said. "This young man is capturing audiences of black...

ABC News' Eloise Harper reports: Speaking in North Bergen, N.J., Sen. Hillary Clinton was brought on stage by Sen. Bob Menendez. Menedez spoke in Spanish and riled up the majority-Hispanic crowd. A banner behind a group of Clinton supporters read: "Juntos con Hillary, Una Vida Mejor." Clinton rattled through her stump speech. She told the crowd that she is going to need their help cleaning up the White House and suggested they bring their brooms and vacuum cleaners to help. Clinton closed with a line that she doesn't normally use. "This is really personal to me," Clinton said. "I want...

I'm still steamed about this ... so let's go over it again. You will have read something about this in yesterday's Nealz Nuze Afterthought .. but then again, maybe not. Let me begin by saying that I've had a good relationship with Radio & Records Magazine (R&R) over the years. I've attended their annual talk radio convention whenever my schedule permitted, and was once honored by them as the News/Talk Personality of the Year. Somehow I don't think that's ever going to happen again ... and here's why. This year the R&R talk radio convention is scheduled for Washington DC....

Gainesville, FL (AHN) - Dr. Jack Kevorkian surprised a crowd of over 5,000 people at the University of Florida (UF) Tuesday night when he unleashed an attack on the "made up mythology of religion," and said that while in medical school he never took the Hippocratic Oath. Kevorkian, 79, spent his time in Gainesville meeting with the UF ACCENT Speakers Bureau and speaking with students at a question-and-answer session ahead of his sold-out speech at the Stephen C. O'Connell Center, Tuesday evening. Throughout the day though, Kevorkian's theme remained focused on the often overlooked 9th Amendment and the "terrible crisis"...

Who's Tired of Pink? Posted January 11, 2008 | 11:45 AM (EST) I am so tired of pink men bombing brown children and rationalizing it as fighting terrorism. I am so tired of pink men telling women (of all colors) what to do with their wombs--which connect with their brains--in case you forgot. I am so tired of pink men telling us we should stay in Iraq for generations. I am so tired of pink men buying bombs and cheating schools. I am so tired of pink men having wives who stand behind them and nod sagely on television. I...

Any man who is under 30 and is not a liberal has no heart; and any man who is over 30 and not a conservative has no brains. - Winston Churchill I guess we know what old Winston would think of Chris Matthews, then. Appearing on Morning Joe today, the Hardball host turned the Churchillian maxim upside down, claiming his gut leans right but his head pulls him left.

After catching Harold Meyerson's latest Washington Post hatemongering against religion in general, Christians in particular, and Republicans especially, all I could say was just WOW! This thing is nearly unhinged and if you took the word Christian out and replaced it with any of the favored, protected minorities that the MSM guards like mother hens, it would be indistinguishable from the kind of pure bigotry that would result in Meyerson's utter ostracizing should it have been written about those protected classes. Calling Republicans/Christians torturers, abusers of immigrants, members of the KKK, bigots and even mean, Meyerson skipped only the Nazi...

Among the statements made by the teacher: What part of the country has the highest murder rate? The South. What part of the country has the highest rape rate? The South. What part of the country has the highest … church attendance? The South. Oh, wait a minute. You mean there is not a correlation between these things … You know, you go down to Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, all these states that are as red as they could possibly be, as right-wing Republican as you could possibly be. When you first present these people with the economic policies of the...

Need something a bit more, you know, sexy and subversive this holiday? Here you go - No fruit baskets. No swell digital cameras and no "Sopranos" DVD sets and no noxious copies of "High School Musical 2" and no "Eat, Pray, Love" and nothing at all approved or endorsed by Oprah. No golfing figurines. No sports paraphernalia. No candleholders. No pink fleece hoodies with little glittery skulls. Not on this, my annual list, anyway. Just random delicious deeply cool things I've come across that make a statement or warm your blood or taste unreal or that serve some sort of...

Congressman backed Ramadan, Diwali, But the Washington Democrat drew the line at Christmas.

It's sexy, it's sacrilegious, it's scandalous, and it's just in time for Christmas. LA's hottest art curator Lenora Claire has done it again with a new collection of saucy art pieces guaranteed to get folks hot and bothered. Mixing Christmas themes with ample female breasts...Claire chose not to rest on her laurels of the hugely successful Golden Gals Gone Wild collection of this summer, but instead opted to pump up the volume with a new group of art that's poised to get viewers hot under the collar. We were lucky enough to interview the Los Feliz curator who will present...

Michael Medved is discussing the upcoming film "Golden Compass" now. I'm not familiar with the book, but I've seen that there is controversy about it being anti-Christian. He says people should be concerned and is explaining it now.

Note to radical Muslims: I've now named my favorite coffee mug 'Muhammad.' Hope that helps -Here's what I like to do every time I see a throng of frothing religious zombies marching in the streets of Sudan or Pakistan or Colorado Springs or anywhere else in the world, carrying knives and torches and holding festering clots of fear in their hearts as they burn flags or photographs or copies of "The Goblet of Fire" or "The Golden Compass" or that sweet little book about the cute gay penguins in the Central Park Zoo and all screaming for the instant death...

Shrill Bible-thumpers boycott 'The Golden Compass'; world's children grin devilishly -It has become some sort of rule, some sort of perfectly delicious law of the popular culture upon which any open-minded and attuned and humor-licked and spiritually aware and intellectually curious and sexually alive human worth her moist, wine-massaged soul can now rely with utter and perfect clarity. . . .

As the movie studios gear up for a big Christmas movie season, one trailer that looks like a blockbuster is "The Golden Compass," which must be trying to cash in on the "Narnia" movies. It has flashy special-effect polar bears in armor and a young heroic damsel in distress facing off against evil forces. The casting is top-notch, led by Nicole Kidman and Daniel Craig, the current star spy in the James Bond movies. But buyer beware: Narnia it's not. It's the anti-Narnia. Instead of a Christian allegory, it's an anti-Christian allegory. The author of "The Golden Compass," Philip Pullman,...