Online Journal of Politics and Foreign Affairs
A Republican mailer in the surprisingly competitive Special Election to replace Anthony Weiner has dredged up last summer’s controversy over the so-called “Ground Zero Mosque”: New York Republicans have sent out a kitchen-sink mailer in the hotly-contested Queens congressional special election depicting a mosque superimposed over the scarred Ground Zero site on one side, and [...]
Another sign of just how pathetic science education is in this country: Nearly half of American voters believe in the Biblical account of creation, and even more think prayer can literally help people recover from medical problems. (…) Some 45 percent of voters accept the Biblical account of creation as the explanation for the origin [...]
Understanding why your enemy hates you seems to be an important thing, but some people would rather believe in caricatures.
Excluding all moral concepts and language from my thinking, feeling and actions has proved so workable and attractive, I am convinced that anyone who gives it a fair shot would likely find it to his liking.
He didn’t mention Tim Cook by name, but the American Family Association’s Bryan Fischer did say that he thinks that homosexuality should be a crime punishable by imprisonment: Both of the cases that went to the United States Supreme Court that dealt with the issue of whether states should criminalize sodomy, and of course they [...]
Is it every appropriate to ask candidates about their religious faith? In some cases, yes it is.
Apparently, Michele Bachmann thinks that Hurricane Irene was some kind of message from her God: She hailed the tea party as being common-sense Americans who understand government shouldn’t spend more than it takes in, know they’re taxed enough already and want government to abide by the Constitution. “I don’t know how much God has to [...]
What are the contours of “mainstream” religious thought in today’s America?
Further evidence of Bachmann’s extreme views on homosexuality.
Earlier this year I noted that New Jersey Governor Chris Christie had come under fire from several conservative bloggers for appointing Sohail Mohammed, a Muslim American attorney, to a seat on the Passaic County Superior Court. Mohammed was confirmed by the state legislature and sworn into office last week, which caused the Newark Star-Ledger to [...]
The Air Force has suspended a course that teaches nuclear officers that Christian ethics permit them to do their job.
Former New Mexico Governor Gary Johnson doesn’t think much of his fellow candidate Herman Cain’s obsession with Muslims and Sharia Law: Herman Cain’s reluctance to appoint Muslims to positions of power and concerns about Sharia law in the U.S. is ridiculous said, Gary Johnson, who’s also not impressed with the Atlanta businessman’s grasp of foreign [...]
Over the past several months, I’ve been pretty hard on Herman Cain for the comments he’s made about Muslims — including the comment that he wouldn’t hire a Muslim to work in his Administration, that he’d require them to take loyalty oaths if he did, and that he believed local communities should have the authority [...]
News that Norwegian terrorist Anders Behring Breivik was a fan of anti-Islamist sites, including Robert Spencer’s Jihad Watch and Pamela Geller’s Atlas Shrugs has opened a big can of schadenfreude.
First, some background, about a week ago, a young Hasidic boy named Leiby Kletzky was abducted while walking home from a day camp in his Brooklyn neighborhood. When his body was found it was discovered that he had been brutally murdered and an Orthdox Jew who lived in the neighborhood has been arrested for his [...]
Herman Cain was on Fox News Sunday this morning and gave perhaps the most disjointed response yet on his position on what rights Muslims should have yet: Herman Cain says voters across the country should have the right to prevent Muslims from building mosques in their communities. In an exchange on “Fox News Sunday,” the [...]
Via the BBC: Austrian driver allowed ‘pastafarian’ headgear photo An Austrian atheist has won the right to be shown on his driving-licence photo wearing a pasta strainer as "religious headgear". Niko Alm first applied for the licence three years ago after reading that headgear was allowed in official pictures only for confessional reasons. Mr Alm [...]
It’s been awhile since the Park51 project has been in the news, but today a New York State Judge finally dismissed a lawsuit that had been filed last year in an effort to block construction of the community center: A lawsuit seeking to halt the construction of a mosque near Ground Zero has been junked [...]
The star of a controversial reality show about polygamy is suing to have Utah’s law that makes his living arrangement illegal struck down.
If you’re wondering if Mitt Romney (and Jon Huntsman) still has a Mormonism problem, this report is pretty good evidence that the answer is yes (the interesting part starts at about the 3:30 mark but the whole segment is worth watching): Is there any other mainstream religion that a reporter in Memphis would mock in [...]
A new Gallup poll discovers something rather obvious, but there’s still a lesson for the GOP.
Two weeks ago, I asked whether Mitt Romney’s religion was still an issue that could hobble his Presidential campaign. Today, Gallup releases a poll that seems to say that the answer is possibly yes: PRINCETON, NJ — Though the vast majority of Americans say they would vote for their party’s nominee for president in 2012 [...]
Trevor Phillips, chairman of the UK’s Equality and Human Rights Commission, says fundamentalist Christians are a far bigger problem than Muslims. And, no, he’s not anti-religion.
Minnesota Congresswoman, and Presidential candidate, Michele Bachmann thinks that public schools should teach so-called “Intelligent Design” alongside evolution in science classrooms: Republican presidential candidate Michele Bachmann explained her skepticism of evolution on Friday and said students should be taught the theory of intelligent design. Bachmann, a congresswoman from Minnesota, also proposed a major overhaul of [...]
The Netherlands is considering a new animal cruelty law that would effectively ban kosher and halal slaughter practices.
Not surprisingly, Herman Cain’s position on hiring Muslims for government positions and subjecting them to loyalty oaths became the subject of a question last night and, not unexpectedly, Cain doubled down yet again: KING: While we’re on the topic of faith and religion, the next question goes to Mr. Cain. You recently said you would [...]
Why isn’t the GOP calling out religious bigotry from one of its candidates?
Rick Perry makes a valid point about bringing the economy back to Biblical principles.
Several months ago, GOP Presidential candidate Herman Cain made headlines when he said that he wouldn’t hire Muslims in his Administration because of this danger of “Sharia Law.” Yesterday on Glenn Beck’s show, Cain doubled down on that comment, saying that he’d hire Muslims, but only if they took a loyalty oath: BECK: You said [...]
Some people still think Mitt Romney’s religion is a relevant issue.
Left-wing religious groups are firing salvos against the Republican Party on the basis of Ayn Rand’s “anti-Christian” influence.
Herman Cain had an interesting reaction to the speeches by Tim Pawlenty and Michele Bachmann to the Faith And Freedom Conference: After our interview, Cain asked me about the other candidate speeches I’ve seen covering FFC this year. There was no indication that Cain had seen them. I mentioned that Bachmann had highlighted her remarks [...]
Harold Camping is nowhere to be seen, but his followers are already starting to talk about the failure of his prediction to come true: Followers of an evangelical broadcaster who declared that Saturday would be Judgement Day are trying to make sense of the failed prediction. Some believers expressed bewilderment or said it was a [...]
From the home page of Family Radio: My question: will it say “-01″ tomorrow?
The Rapture has no biblical foundation and was made up by a 15-year-old girl in 1830.
Call it the legacy of Osama bin Laden: Two Muslim religious leaders who were removed from a commercial airliner in Memphis say they were told it was because the pilot refused to fly with them aboard. Masudur Rahman and Mohamed Zaghloul were supposed to travel on an 8:30 a.m. Delta flight, run by a subsidiary, [...]
Dodd Harris has already noted the more bizarre aspects of the power struggle between Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khameni, but yesterday that power struggle seemed to turn more serious as it entered the mosques: The unprecedented power struggle between the two most powerful leaders in Iran deepened Friday, spilling out [...]
The American Family Association’s Bryan Fischer would apparently like to bring back the Crusades: “The only thing that will give us a shot at building a democracy in an Islamic land is a mass conversion of its people to biblical Christianity. So that means if we want to see freedom come to those darkened, benighted [...]
Sila Sahin set out to make a statement about the Muslim treatment of women by posing nude in Playboy, and got a little more than she bargained for: A Muslim actress has caused a storm by posing naked for Playboy. Sila Sahin has been branded a “whore” and a “western slut” after appearing topless on [...]
The church that President Obama and his family attended on Easter Sunday morning has received threats after being the subject of a rant by conservative talker Sean Hannity: Shiloh Baptist Church in the District said it has received threatening phone calls and e-mails after an Easter visit from President Obama and a conservative television commentator’s [...]
Franklin Graham, who has made quite a name for himself in recent years with inflammatory statements about Islam, has apparently joined those who don’t think the President is a Christian: Graham, who has prayed with Obama, said the president has told him that he’s a Christian, but allowed that “there are many people that do [...]
On Palm Sunday, French Christians stormed a museum and slashed Andres Serrano’s Piss Christ
As I noted yesterday, the pending release of Atlas Shrugged as a motion picture will likely spark a great deal of discussion of Ayn Rand. An example if Donald Luskin’s column in the WSJ: Remembering the Real Ayn Rand. The whole piece is worth a read, but I was especially struck by the following: Rand [...]
The Republican war against geology, anthropology, cosmology, biology, and archeology continues apace: Tennessee’s House Bill 368 passed the House of Representatives on a 70-23 vote on April 7, 2011. “The debate ranged over the scientific method, ‘intellectual bullies,’ hair spray and ‘Inherit the Wind,’” reported the Chattanooga Times Free Press (April 7, 2011). The bill, [...]
