Religion Dispatches
Adam Serwer asks a good question: why now? Why, after all the obvious agreement between conservatives and Beck — on Israel, on Islam, on big bad bogeymen like shari’ah water-carriers and socialists and Stalinists et al. — are conservatives suddenly, as Anthea put it yesterday, circling Beck like sharks? As I discussed as the Egypt news was breaking and Beck was jumping on the opportunity to link the Muslim Brotherhood to the grand socialist consp…
Read MoreThere’s now officially a hat in the ring—or is it a pizza? Herman Cain, the man who saved Godfather’s Pizza and argued against Bill Clinton’s attempt at health care reform, has started a presidential exploratory committee. In a profile on Cain at Slate, David Weigel describes Cain’s popularity among the Tea Party folk: When Cain speaks at conservative conferences and Tea Party rallies, he gets bigger crowds than members of Congress, and only slig…
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Pastor Carl Gallups of Hickory Hammock Baptist Church in Milton, Florida, has produced two videos about the attempted assassination of Rep. Gabrielle Giffords that glorify Gun Owners of America, claim that Giffords knew her assailant, assert that owning guns is a “God-given right,” and that gun control leads to genocide. One of Gallups’ claims, that Giffords subscribed to Loughner’s YouTube channel, is now being touted by Jerome Corsi, the conspi…
Read MoreThe Freedom Federation, a coalition of religious right groups that has sought to build support beyond the movement’s white evangelical base, has sent a letter to every U.S. Senator, urging them not to repeal Don’t Ask Don’t Tell. The letter, signed by leaders of a wide variety of religious right organizations, claims that these organizations together represent 40 million people. (I covered the Freedom Federation’s first conference back in April….
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Last week marked a rare moment in the Catholic Church. Common sense and a modest amount of compassion trumped authority and fear-based moral teaching about sexuality. In his just-released book-length interview with the Pope, Light of the World, German journalist Peter Seewald asked a question about the inclusion of condoms in HIV/AIDS prevention: “Are you saying, then, that the Catholic Church is actually not opposed in principle to the use of co…
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In the lower level of the Empire State Building last month, about 100 college students toting fare from Trader Joe’s and Whole Foods attended a brown bag lunch whose speaker revived the dread of the Cold War, ominously asserting that communism continues to threaten America. It could have been ripped from the headlines of the sensationalistic conservative site World Net Daily, but the setting was far more staid. The speaker, David Noebel, part of…
Read MoreNo, really. As Candace noted earlier today, the head of the Family Research Council apparently believes that if the Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell policy is repealed, the armed forces will empty, forcing the return of a military draft: The military is not a red state/blue state institution. It unifies our country. It draws its dedicated members from all regions. Still, it is no secret that the military is a socially conservative institution. It recruits h…
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According to early reports, Black Friday, the annual start of the holiday shopping season, was only modestly better than last year. Many are hopeful that today, Cyber Monday, will offer a more reassuring sign that Americans continue to have faith in the economy by sacrificing their hard-earned cash during this season of giving. Time will tell whether holiday shopping has any significant impact on the sluggish economy, but you can bet that a door-…
Read MoreFrom Think Progress comes this breakdown of the 25-minute ad produced by the National Republican Trust PAC, and which is airing on Fox affiliates around the country: Several Fox television stations and one ABC affiliate in key battleground states are running a Republican front group’s anti-Obama propaganda as paid programming in the final days leading up to the election. The National Republican Trust PAC, run by conservative conspiracy theorist S…
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Yesterday NPR aired a segment — part of its “Truth Squad-ing” of campaign ads — with PolitiFact, which joined Factcheck.org’s assessment that the “Taliban Dan” ad took Republican challenger Dan Webster’s statements out of context. PolitiFact’s Bill Adair: The real distortion here is the use of the “submit to me” repeatedly. That’s completely taken out of context. What Webster was talking about in this case was a biblical passage that he was urgin…
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