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We don’t force our faith on anybody else,” Chuck Wingate, executive director of Bethesda Mission, told PennLive.com. “But we find the whole idea that the government’s going to come in a[nd] tell us what we can and cannot do in our own facility to be out of bounds, especially in matters of faith.” Wingate, who says his Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, ministry serves 100,000 people a month, was referring to a new U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) regulation forbidding recipients of USDA food from requiring “a beneficiary to attend or participate in any explicitly religious activities that are offered by the organization.”...

WASHINGTON -- Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack said America needs to stop wasting food, even if that means teaching people to cut back on the amount of food on their plates. Speaking at the National Press Club on Monday, the former Iowa governor said long-term food insecurity "is a challenge, because we're going to have to increase food production -- I've seen anywhere from 50 to 70 percent in the next 35 years -- to meet a growing world population." "But the first step, and the one way the USDA can provide help and assistance to meet this need, is to...

The U.S. Department of Agriculture is holding summits to promote the role of lesbian farmers as a part of its “Rural Pride” campaign. The agency is working with singer and LGBT activist Cyndi Lauper for a “day of conversation” about the struggles of gay and transgender individuals in rural America. The agency says its wants to change the perception of what it means to be a farmer in America away from the “white, rich male.” The latest summit, first reported by the College Fix, will be held on August 18 at Drake University in Iowa. “The Office of the Assistant...

This is an outrage. If the roles were were reversed and it was Muslims being ignored, Muslims whose dietary religious traditions being violated, all hell would break loose. Pamela Geller: USDA Ignores AFDI Petition to Require All Halal Meat Be Labeled as Such A great deal of meat sold in this country is halal but is not labeled is such. It’s a scandal — but an established practice: meat packers generally do not separate halal meat from non-halal meat, and do not label halal meat as such. We attempted to right that wrong. But the U.S. Department of Agriculture has...

Anti-Shariah activist Pamela Geller’s campaign to get halal meat labeled on American supermarket shelves has been sent down the memory hole by the federal government. Geller started a petition drive in November 2011 with the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Food Safety and Inspection Service seeking to have halal meat – which is ritually slaughtered in the presence of an imam to make it suitable for Muslims to consume – labeled as such. It was only fair, she said. Kosher meat, which is blessed by a rabbi before slaughter, is labeled on store shelves so why not halal meat? More than...

While it is already known that personnel from the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) met with Mexican embassy officials this year to discuss nutrition assistance outreach efforts to immigrants, the agency is “slow-walking” a U.S. Senate effort to obtain information about the USDA’s partnership with Mexico to get more people enrolled in nutrition assistance programs. According to both the USDA and the Mexican embassy, USDA personnel meet “periodically” with officials from the Mexican embassy to discuss nutrition “assistance and education” pertaining to 15 domestic nutrition assistance programs, including the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), or food stamps. The most...

BEGIN TRANSCRIPT RUSH: "USDA Newsletter Encourages Employees Not to Eat Meat." This story has been unearthed by Caroline May at the Daily Caller. And, you know, she deserves a shout-out. Caroline May at the Daily Caller seems to be making a career out of exposing the information being put out on the USDA website. Caroline May is the reporter who broke all the stories about the USDA's various campaigns to enroll more people in food stamps. She's the one that found that. And in this report today, she tells us that the USDA has been telling its employees via their...

The Spanish-language radio ads composed a 10-part miniseries called "Hope Park." In it, the characters were shown persistently trying to convince a character named "Diana" to go on food stamps -- known these days as SNAP, or the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program -- even though her husband works and she doesn't think she needs it. "I don't need help from anyone," Diana says in Episode 4. "My husband makes enough to take care of us." But her friends are persistent, and by Episode 10 Diana is enrolled and singing the program's praises.

No, it’s not a joke. President Obama really is imposing a special new tax on Christmas trees. And while the policy seems a ludicrous political misstep – and possibly an unconstitutional one at that – in truth, the Obama Christmas Tree Tax is much worse than that. The $2 million the Obama Administration expects the tax to raise will not reduce the deficit or cover needed government services. Instead, it will serve as a marketing slush fund for the Christmas tree industry. The money will set up a brand new government agency called (no, seriously) the Christmas Tree Promotion Board....

President Obama’s Agriculture Department today announced that it will impose a new 15-cent charge on all fresh Christmas trees—the Christmas Tree Tax—to support a new Federal program to improve the image and marketing of Christmas trees.

President Barack Obama speaks at a rally in Philadelphia, Sunday, Oct. 10, 2010. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite) (CNSNews.com) - President Barack Obama is requesting $1.15 billion from Congress—to add to a $100-million earmark he pushed through Congress in 2008 when he was a senator—to create a $1.25 billion federal fund to settle discrimination claims by what the Justice Department says is 66,000 African Americans who “farmed or attempted to farm” and were allegedly the victims of discrimination committed by the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) during the period from Jan. 1, 1981 to Dec. 31, 1996.During that 16-year period,...

On Monday, the Dept of Agriculture demanded the resignation of Shirley Sherrod where she appeared to describe to a cheering crowd of the Georgia NAACP how she denied assistance to a poor white farmer about to lose his land. Declaring itself "appalled" at this "shameful" act of racism, the NAACP said it would investigate the Georgia crowd that cheered her and praised the Dept of Agriculture for firing her. On Wednesday, Agriculture Secy Tom Vilsack was begging for Sherrod's forgiveness, and the NAACP was burbling apologies.

President Obama said Secretary Tom Vilsack rushed to judgment when he dismissed Shirley Sherrod from the Department of Agriculture amid charges of racism. "He jumped the gun, partly because we now live in this media culture where something goes up on YouTube or a blog and everybody scrambles," Obama told consumer correspondent Elisabeth Leamy in an exclusive “GMA” interview.

A USDA worker became the first innocent causality in the verbal race war being played out in the media between conservative entities and the NAACP. Yesterday, the mainstream media was buzzing about a Shirley Sherrod, former agriculture director of rural development in Georgia and virtual unknown, who was forced to resign after a video surfaced on conservative blogger Andrew Breitbart’s Big Government website (and replayed over and over again on Fox News) of Sherrod supposedly expressing racist intent and remarks before an NAACP banquet. Sherrod, who was condemned by the NAACP, was taped speaking about an encounter she had with...

Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack said early Wednesday that his department will reconsider the ouster of an employee who resigned over alleged race comments. His statement came after civil rights leaders said they were "snookered" into believing a conservative website's charges of racism against employee Shirley Sherrod were true.

That's right. She doesn't know her a$$ from a hole in the ground about agriculture, and she said as much on tape. She's a racial set-aside queen. Read below. Successful and Unsuccessful Claims Must Be "Interrelated" to Recover Attorney Fees for Unsuccessful Claims Shirley Sherrod named Georgia Director of Rural Development Quote: RDLN Graduate and Board Vice Chair Shirley Sherrod was appointed Georgia Director for Rural Development by Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack on July 25. Only days earlier, she learned that New Communities, a group she founded with her husband and other families (see below) has won a thirteen...

Days after the NAACP clashed with Tea Party members over allegations of racism, a video has surfaced showing an Agriculture Department official regaling an NAACP audience with a story about how she withheld help to a white farmer facing bankruptcy. Shirley Sherrod, the department's Georgia director of Rural Development, is shown in the clip describing "the first time I was faced with having to help a white farmer save his farm." Sherrod, who is black, claimed the farmer took a long time trying to show he was "superior" to her. The audience laughed as she described how she determined his...

As of 10:00 p.m. EDT, hours after Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack fired Shirley Sherrod for racism in her official duties after being exposed by BigGovernment.com there is a near total blackout by the mainstream news media on the scandal.Sherrod was appointed a year ago by Vilsack to be the Georgia director of Rural Development where she doled out millions of dollars in federal funds.Just days before her appointment, the Obama Justice Department settled a lawsuit by Sherrod and her husband claiming discrimination against their farm cooperative for a reported $13 million. A search of Google News and Google Blogs...

Mecklenburg County, Virginia (CNN) -- On his southern Virginia farm on a recent warm Saturday, John Boyd Jr. needs a dose of rain before he can plant soybeans. More than 200 miles away in Washington, Boyd has a bigger problem on his hands. President Obama has promised to help black farmers who have not received the $1.25 billion settlement owed to them after years of being denied government farm loans and support from federal programs because of the color of their skin. "This is not about us complaining, this is about the government not doing what they promised they were...