YOUR GOVERNMENT AT WORK

[HisDaughter]

Can you use "Congress" and "common sense" in the same sentence?

Yep ... "Congress lacks common sense." " Congress has zero common sense." A few more like that works for me. 

Oh!!  I guess you can!

[Soldier4Christ]

Oklahoma to feds: Don't tread on me
State House defends its sovereignty from D.C. intrusion

Steamed over a perceived increase in federal usurping of states' rights, Oklahoma's House of Representatives told Washington, D.C., to back off.

Joint House Resolution 1089, passed by an overwhelming 92-3 margin, reasserts Oklahoma's sovereignty under the Tenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, and, according to the resolution's own language, is "serving notice to the federal government to cease and desist certain mandates."

The Tenth Amendment states, "The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the states, are reserved to the states respectively, or to the people."

Traditionally, this language has meant that the federal government is limited in its scope and cannot usurp the sovereign powers of states. In recent decades, however, as the size and reach of the federal government has expanded, many have come to question whether Washington has stepped on states' rights and gotten too big for its breeches.

Charles Key, the Republican state representative who authored the resolution, told WND that he introduced it because he believes the federal government's overstepping of its bounds has put our constitutional form of government in danger.

"The more we stand by and watch the federal government get involved in areas where it has no legal authority, we kill the Constitution a little at a time," he said. "The last few decades, the Constitution has been hanging by a thread."

Specifically, Resolution 1089 says the following:

"The State of Oklahoma hereby claims sovereignty under the Tenth Amendment to the Constitution of the United States over all powers not otherwise enumerated and granted to the federal government by the Constitution of the United States."

The resolution resolves that Oklahoma will "serve as notice and demand to the federal government, as our agent, to cease and desist, effective immediately, mandates that are beyond the scope of these constitutionally delegated powers."

It also instructs that "a copy of this resolution be distributed to the president of the United States, the president of the United States Senate, the speaker of the United States House of Representatives, the speaker of the House and the president of the Senate of each state's legislature of the United States of America, and each member of the Oklahoma congressional delegation."

The resolution does not, as some have speculated, amount to secession, but it does send a warning signal to Washington: Oklahoma does not intend to be bullied by big brother government.

The Sooner State became a hotbed of federal vs. state authority clashes earlier this month when a federal judge blocked a portion of Oklahoma's tough immigration laws, ruling that plaintiffs would likely establish that the state mandates preempted federal immigration laws.

Oklahoma's immigration statute, known as the Oklahoma Taxpayer and Citizen Protection Act of 2007, originated as House Bill 1804 (co-authored, incidentally, by Key). It has been characterized by USA Today as "arguably the nation's toughest state law targeting illegal immigration."

The statute prohibits illegal immigrants from receiving tax-supported services and makes it a state crime to transport or harbor illegal immigrants. It also mandates that businesses take measures to verify the work eligibility of employees and independent contractors.

The U.S. Chamber of Commerce and individual chambers of commerce in Oklahoma challenged the latter mandates, set to go into effect July 1, in court.

On June 4th, U.S. District Judge Robin J. Cauthron issued an injunction against enforcing the July 1 mandates.

"We've just had a federal judge say that our immigration law's employer provisions are unconstitutional, claiming it as federal government territory," said Key in response. "That goes right to the issue of (Resolution 1089). The federal government doesn't have the right to have sole domain over that issue or many of the issues it has spilled over into."

Though House Joint Resolution 1089 received great support in Oklahoma's House of Representatives, it has now hit a roadblock. In the state's Senate, where the seats are split, 24-24, between Republicans and Democrats, the resolution was sent to the Senate's rules committee, where it languished without action until the legislature adjourned.

According to Key, the Senate has worked out agreements on how to manage the political tie, including power given to the Democratic senators to not hear certain bills. Those senators, says Key, refuse to even hear Resolution 1089.

In the House, where Republicans enjoy a 57-44 majority, Resolution 1089 received a hearing and was supported overwhelmingly on both sides of the aisle.

"I was on the Democratic side of the floor," said Key, "and one member went off talking about how far we've gotten, how bad (federal overreaches of power) are getting – it's the kind of thing you hear in coffee shops."

Key said his bill "is making a difference" in the way legislators in Oklahoma are talking and thinking about state's rights. "I think it will make even more of a difference," he said, "when I bring it up again." He vows to put the pressure on Oklahoma's Senate to pass a resolution like 1089, and he plans to begin communicating the cause with legislators around the country, urging them to bring up the issue in their states.

Key passed a similar resolution in 1994, when he was serving a previous tenure in the legislature. But that attempt was only a House resolution. He authored 1089 as a joint resolution because, he said, he wanted to increase its exposure. "As people who believe in this constitutional form of government," he said, "we need to bring this issue to a national level and debate."

[nChrist]

YEAH!

It sounds like Oklahoma is going in the right direction. Many Federal judges around the country ARE BUTCHERING the Constitution in almost countless ways these days. Many State Representatives of the people are doing the same things. The rule of law, civil rights, and Constitutional rights were the MORAL FOUNDATION that WAS UNDER GOD at one time not too long ago. This is what the devil is attempting to destroy as we speak.

[Soldier4Christ]

Senate sends Jindal bill on evolution

A bill to overhaul the way evolution is taught in Louisiana public schools easily cleared its final legislative hurdle Monday despite threats of a lawsuit.

Opponents, mostly outside the State Capitol, contend the legislation would inject creationism and other religious themes into public schools.

However, the Senate voted 36-0 without debate to go along with the same version of the proposal that the House passed last week 94-3.

The measure, Senate Bill 733, now goes to Gov. Bobby Jindal, who is expected to sign it.

Backers said the bill is needed to give science teachers more freedom to hold discussions that challenge traditional theories, including Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution.

“It provides assurances to both teachers and students that academic inquiries are welcome and appropriate in the science classroom,” said Gene Mills, executive director of the Louisiana Family Forum.

Mills’ group touts itself as one that promotes traditional family values. It was called an influential mover behind the bill.

However, officials of the American Civil Liberties Union of Louisiana and Americans United for Separation of Church and State in Washington, D.C., said the bill represents an intrusion of religion into public schools that may warrant a lawsuit.

“It is the ACLU’s position that we intend to do whatever is necessary to keep religion out of our science classrooms.” said Marjorie R. Esman, executive director of the group in New Orleans.

The legislation is called the Louisiana Science Education Act.

It would allow science teachers to use supplemental materials, in addition to state-issued textbooks, on issues like evolution, global warming and human cloning.

The aim of such materials, the bill says, is to promote “critical thinking skills, logical analysis and open and objective discussion of scientific theories being studied,” including evolution.

“I just believe that it is important that supplemental scientific information be able to be brought into the school system,” state Sen. Ben Nevers, D-Bogalusa and sponsor of the bill, said after the vote.

Nevers said that, despite the rapid pace of changes in science, textbooks are only updated every seven years.

Critics said DVDs and other supplemental materials with religious themes will be added to classrooms to try to undercut widely accepted scientific views.

The bill cleared its final legislative hurdle in less than five minutes.

Nevers noted that the key change made in the House would allow the state Board of Elementary and Secondary Education to toss out science supplemental materials that it considers inappropriate.

Opponents contend the bill is a bid to allow the teaching of creationism and intelligent design. Christian creationism is the view that life began 6,000 years ago in a process described in the Bible’s Book of Genesis.

Intelligent design advocates believe that the universe stems from an intelligent designer rather than chance.

The Rev. Barry Lynn, executive director of Americans United for Separation of Church and State, said in a prepared statement that the bill “is clearly designed to smuggle religion into the science classroom, and that’s unwise and unconstitutional.” Joe Conn, a spokesman for the group, said attorneys will review the bill.

Lynn’s group calls itself a national watchdog organization to prevent government-backed religious teaching.

Barbara Forrest, of Holden, a member of the group’s board of trustees and a professor of philosophy at Southeastern Louisiana University in Hammond, also criticized passage of the measure.

“I think what the Legislature has done is an embarrassment to the state in the eyes of the entire country,” Forrest said.

Nevers downplayed talk of legal action against his bill.

“I don’t think any lawsuits will be brought because of this act,” he said.

Mills predicted that the bill will survive any legal challenge.

In 1987 the U.S. Supreme Court struck down a 1981 state law that required equal time on creationism when evolution was taught in public schools.

[Soldier4Christ]

'Statue of Tyranny' case advances
Attorneys argue 10th Circuit ruling also would permit 'Hitler memorial'

Could some wealthy private party force the U.S. to allow a "Statue of Tyranny" in New York harbor alongside the famed Statue of Liberty? Yes, unless the U.S. Supreme Court reverses a confused free speech decision from a split 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Denver, according to a law firm advocating for constitutional rights.

"The court of appeals' approach would make the government's display of the Statue of Liberty the speech of France, not the United States, entitling others to erect counter-monuments," said a brief filed with the high court by the American Center for Law and Justice, which represents the city of Pleasant Grove, Utah, in the dispute.

"Likewise, the Vietnam, Korean, World War II, and upcoming Martin Luther King, Jr., monuments in the nation's capital would likely be deemed private speech, not government speech, entitling Summum and everyone else with a monument to occupy their own corner of the National Mall," the brief said.

The case arose from a demand by the group Summum to have its "Seven Aphorisms" monument erected near a Ten Commandments monument on display, among other monuments and memorials, in Pioneer Park in Pleasant Grove, Utah. When the city declined, Summum sued. The ACLJ came to the defense of the city, and a federal district court in Utah refused to order the city to erect Summum's monument. Then a three-judge panel at 10th Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals in Denver said Summum could insist upon erecting its own "Seven Aphorisms" monument because the city already displayed a monument of the Ten Commandments which was donated decades ago by the Fraternal Order of Eagles.

The ACLJ yesterday filed its opening brief on behalf of the city's rights in the case that could impact local, state and federal government decisions across the continent. The case essentially will decide, the ACLJ said, if cities will be faced with the choice of dismantling all monuments, memorials and other displays, "including long-standing patriotic and historical displays," or let "all comers install privately owned monuments or displays, regardless of content."

"The Supreme Court is faced with what we believe is an easy choice: preserve sound precedent involving the well-established distinction between government speech and private speech – or permit a twisted interpretation of the Constitution to create havoc in cities and localities across America," said Jay Sekulow, chief counsel of the ACLJ, who will present oral arguments to the high court on behalf of Pleasant Grove.

"We're hopeful the high court will correct a troubling decision that ultimately would force local governments to remove long-standing and well established patriotic, religious and historical displays," he said.

The ACLJ's brief says the First Amendment does not require that a government park be turned into a "cluttered junkyard of monuments contributed by all comers," but the 10th Circuit ruling made several crucial errors and failed to recognize that.

"First, the court below fundamentally misapprehended the distinction between government speech and private speech in this case," the brief said. "Second, the court below misidentified the relevant 'forum.' Third, the court erroneously held that city parks are traditional public fora for private, unattended, permanent monuments. Fourth, the lower court erred by holding that a city's acceptance of donated monuments creates a designated public forum for private speech through such monuments," the brief said.

The concept of allowing anything as a monument is "scary," Frank Manion, of the ACLJ, told WND earlier. "The Minutemen in Massachusetts? We need a Redcoat. A George Washington statue? Why not George the 3rd. A Holocaust memorial? How about a Hitler memorial?"

The brief describes Summum as a "corporate sole and a church" founded in 1975 with headquarters in Salt Lake City. The "organization" lauds the principles of "psychokinesis, correspondence, vibration, opposition, rhythm, cause and effect, and gender," and promotes mummification of both people and pets.

The ACLJ said the Ten Commandments monuments are the real targets of the legal actions, because in many circumstances, cities or other governments likely would order such monuments removed, rather than order acceptance of others.

The ACLJ, which has worked on the case with the Thomas More Law Center, contends that the Constitution "does not empower private parties to force permanent displays into a park, crowding out the available physical space and trumping the government's own vision" for the parks.

"In the [related] Duchesne case, even an attorney for Summum admitted to the federal district court that its position could lead to bizarre results. Summum's attorneys told the court that if a city park is required to display monuments contributed by all comers, the city park may well end up looking like a cemetery with many, many monuments," the ACLJ said.

Under Summum's theology, adherents believe the first set of stone tablets Moses received on Mt. Sinai contained its seven aphorisms, "made by a divine being."

"The first set of stone tablets was not inscribed with the Ten Commandments. Rather, they contained aphorisms of a Higher Law that held very profound and deep meanings," the organization's website says.

The group believes Moses "had been initiated into an understanding of the inner, esoteric source" of those aphorisms, but when he "observed the immature behavior and attitude of the Israelites" he realized they could not understand them too.

"So Moses destroyed the stone tables and revealed the aphorisms to a select few."

The ACLJ warned earlier: "In 1886, the United States government accepted from the people of France a donation of a 151-foot tall colossal statue called 'Liberty Enlightening the World.' Since that time, the government has displayed this Statue of Liberty in a traditional public forum in New York Harbor.

"For years, demonstrators with messages to deliver have assembled, handed out literature and otherwise expressed themselves at the site subject to certain regulations of the time, place and manner of their expression. But it probably never occurred to any such demonstrators that they enjoyed a constitutional right to insist that the government allow them to erect their own 151-foot tall statue or monument setting forth an alternative message to that conveyed by Lady Liberty," the law firm warned.

"Under the flawed private speech jurisprudence of the panel in this case – there exists no principled basis upon which the government could turn down for permanent display on Liberty Island a donation of a 'Statue of Tyranny,' or, perhaps, a new copper colossus bearing the message 'Pay No Attention to the Lady With the Torch – the Golden Door is Now Closed,'" the legal briefs argued.

The brief notes "while 'The Great Gatsby' is admittedly not a government speech, the selection of that book for placement on a public library's shelves is government speech. F. Scott Fitzgerald (were he still alive) could neither insist on the book's inclusion … nor object to its removal from the shelves to make way for the latest Harry Potter book."

Unless overturned, the 10th Circuit ruling "threatens to wreak havoc upon governments at every level in their ability to control the permanent physical occupation of government land."

[Soldier4Christ]

Dems want control
over U.S. oil flow
Hinchey joins Waters, says
'We should own refineries'

The itch to control the U.S. oil industry is spreading among Democrats in Washington, with Rep. Maurice Hinchey, D-N.Y., joining in the chorus to nationalize the energy company assets.

"We (the government) should own the refineries," Hinchey said today, according to a Fox News alert. "Then we can control how much gets out into the market.

WND earlier reported when U.S. Rep. Maxine Waters, D-Calif., during a grilling of oil executives by a panel of U.S. House members, threatened to nationalize the industry if executives were unsuccessful in bringing pump prices for gasoline down.

A report by Fox News, captured in a clip posted on YouTube.com, showed Waters challenging the president of Shell Oil, John Hofmeister, to guarantee the prices consumers pay will go down if the oil companies are allowed to drill wherever they want off of U.S. shores.

Hofmeister replied: "I can guarantee to the American people, because of the inaction of the United States Congress, ever-increasing prices unless the demand comes down."

The Shell exec said paying $5 at the pump "will look like a very low price in the years to come if we are prohibited from finding new reserves, new opportunities to increase supplies."

Waters responded, in part, "And guess what this liberal would be all about. This liberal will be about socializing … uh, um. …"

The congresswoman paused to collect her thoughts.

"Would be about, basically, taking over, and the government running all of your companies. …"

The oil executives responded, according to Fox News, by saying they've seen this before, in Hugo Chavez's Venezuela.

Fox reported today the latest statements from Hinchey came as Democrats responded to President Bush's call for Congress to lift the moratorium on offshore drilling.

Democrats also said the reason the Appropriations Committee markup, where the vote on an amendment to lift a ban on offshore drilling was to be, was cancelled so that representatives could focus on a supplemental Iraq spending bill.

Hinchey, one of the more ardent opponents of off-shore drilling, simply said Congress will do what is "in the best interest of the American people. Not major corporations."

[Soldier4Christ]

Hinchey, one of the more ardent opponents of off-shore drilling, simply said Congress will do what is "in the best interest of the American people. Not major corporations."

... and not what is in the best interest of the people either.

[Soldier4Christ]

State denies cancer treatment, offers suicide instead
'To say, we'll pay for you to die, but not pay for you to live, it's cruel'

State officials have offered a lung cancer patient the option of having the Oregon Health Plan, set up in 1994 to ration health care, pay for an assisted suicide but not for the chemotherapy prescribed by her physician.

The story appears to be a happy ending for Barbara Wagner, who has been notified by a drug manufacturer that it will provide the expensive medication, estimated to cost $4,000 a month, for the first year and then allow her to apply for further treatment, according to a report in the Eugene Register-Guard.

But the word from the state was coverage for palliative care, which would include the state's assisted suicide program, would be allowed but not coverage for the cancer treatment drugs.

"To say to someone, we'll pay for you to die, but not pay for you to live, it's cruel," Wagner told the newspaper. "I get angry. Who do they think they are?"

She said she was devastated when the state health program refused coverage for Tarceva, the drug her doctor ordered for treatment of her lung cancer.

The refusal came in an unsigned letter from LIPA, the company that runs the state program in that part of Oregon.

"We had no intent to upset her, but we do need to point out the options available to her under the Oregon Health Plan," Dr. John Sattenspiel, senior medical director for LIPA, told the newspaper.

"I understand the way it was interpreted. I'm not sure how we can lift that. The reality is, at some level (doctor-assisted suicide) could be considered as a palliative or comfort care measure."

The 64-year-old Wagner lives in a low-income apartment in Springfield with her dog, the newspaper said.

State officials say the Oregon Health Plan prioritizes treatments, with diagnoses and ailments deemed the most important, such as pregnancy, childbirth and preventive care for children at the top of the list. Other treatments rank below, officials said.

"We can't cover everything for everyone," Dr. Walter Shaffer, a spokesman for the state Division of Medical Assistance Programs, told the paper. "Taxpayer dollars are limited for publicly funded programs. We try to come up with policies that provide the most good for the most people."

He said many cancer treatments are a high priority, but others reflect the "desire on the part of the framers of this list to not cover treatments that are futile."

Wagner, however, is ending up with the treatment needed when her lung cancer, in remission for two years, returned.

She reported a representative for the pharmaceutical company called and notified her the drug would be provided for at least the first year.

"We have been warning for years that this was a possibility in Oregon," said the "Bioethics Pundit" on the Bioethics blog. "Medicaid is rationed, meaning that some treatments are not covered. But assisted suicide is always covered."

"This isn't the first time this has happened either," the blogger wrote. "A few years ago a patient who needed a double organ transplant was denied the treatment but would have been eligible for state-financed assisted suicide. But not to worry. Just keep repeating the mantra: There are no abuses with Oregon's assisted suicide law. There are no abuses. There are no abuses!

[Soldier4Christ]

Constitutionality of light bulb ban questioned
Congressman doubts China imports answer to U.S. energy crisis

Members of Congress are beginning to have second thoughts about the ban on incandescent light bulbs effective in 2014 as a result of an energy bill signed into law earlier this year.

Rep. Ted Poe, R-Texas, says his objection is very basic – the Constitution doesn't authorize Congress to do anything remotely like banning a product that has been used safely and efficiently for more than 100 years in favor of Chinese-imported compact fluorescent light bulbs that pose considerable health and safety risks.

Poe cited the dangers associated with CFLs, which carry small amounts of mercury that can enter the environment through breakage and disposal. He also objected to reliance on the CFL alternatives when, currently, all are made in China.

"Congress passed an energy bill that should be called the anti-American non-energy bill because it punishes Americans for using energy when it should be finding new sources of available energy," Poe stated.

From the floor of the House, Poe addressed the dangers of the CFL bulbs, explaining the extensive cleanup required by the Environmental Protection Agency for simply breaking a bulb. When a bulb, which contains mercury, is broken, according to the EPA, the room must be evacuated for 15 minutes and aired out with windows, but not before all glass is removed, placed in a sealed glass jar and disposed of outside. Any remaining glass must be picked up with tape. In addition, central heating or air conditioning units must be turned off.

This is what the EPA officials say about light bulbs they want the public to use.

In addition, the bulbs cause photographs to fade and can interfere with radio signals, television and remote controls, according to Poe.

"Madam speaker, I have a Constitution here, like most members of Congress," Poe said. "I carry it with me, I've read it through and through but I don't see anywhere in the U.S. Constitution where it gives the government the right to control the type of light bulbs used in Dime Box, Texas, or anywhere else in the United States."

Poe criticized Congress' focus on regulation rather than working to develop natural resources during an energy crisis.

"I yearn for the day when Americans took care of America by developing our own abundant natural resources like coal, natural gas and crude oil to provide affordable energy to Americans," Poe remarked.

[Soldier4Christ]

House passes new surveillance law
Compromise bill easily approved, shields telecoms from related lawsuits

The House Friday easily approved a compromise bill setting new electronic surveillance rules that effectively shield telecommunications companies from lawsuits arising from the government's terrorism-era warrantless eavesdropping on phone and computer lines in this country.

The bill, which was passed on a 293-129 vote, does more than just protect the telecoms. The update to the 30-year-old Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act is an attempt to balance privacy rights with the government's responsibility to protect the country against attack, taking into account changes in telecommunications technologies.

"This bill, though imperfect, protects both," said Rep. Jane Harman, D-Calif., and a former member of the intelligence committee.

President Bush praised the bill Friday. "It will help our intelligence professionals learn enemies' plans for new attacks," he said in a statement before television cameras a few hours before the vote.

The House's passage of the FISA Amendment bill marks the beginning of the end to a monthslong standoff between Democrats and Republicans about the rules for government wiretapping inside the United States. The Senate was expected to pass the bill with a large margin, perhaps as soon as next week, before Congress takes a break during the week of the Fourth of July.

The government eavesdropped on American phone and computer lines for almost six years after the Sept. 11 attacks without permission from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, the special panel established for that purpose under the 1978 law. Some 40 lawsuits have been filed against the telecommunications companies by groups and individuals who think the Bush administration illegally monitored their phone calls or e-mails.

The White House had threatened to veto any surveillance bill that did not also shield the companies.

The compromise bill directs a federal district court to review certifications from the attorney general saying the telecommunications companies received presidential orders telling them wiretaps were needed to detect or prevent a terrorist attack. If the paperwork were deemed in order, the judge would dismiss the lawsuit.

It would also require the inspectors general of the Justice Department, Pentagon and intelligence agencies to investigate the wiretapping program, with a report due in a year.

Critics of the bill say dismissal is a foregone conclusion.

"These provisions turn the judiciary into the administration's rubber stamp," said Rep. Zoe Lofgren, D-Calif. She opposes the bill.

Opponents of immunity believe civil lawsuits are the only way the full extent of the wiretapping program will ever be revealed.

Key senators voiced strong opposition to the compromise, although they're unlikely to have the votes to either defeat or filibuster the bill. Sen. Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania, the top Republican on the Senate Judiciary Committee, condemned the immunity deal. He said that nothing in the new bill would prevent the government from once again wiretapping domestic phone and computer lines without court permission.

Specter said the problem is constitutional: The White House may still assert that the president's Article II powers as commander in chief supersede statutes that would limit him actions.

"Only the courts can decide that issue and this proposal dodges it," Specter said.

Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi of California disputed that, saying FISA would from now on be the authority for the government to conduct electronic surveillance.

"There is no inherent authority of the president to do whatever he wants. This is a democracy, not a monarchy," she said.

Some civil liberties and privacy groups are also opposing the bill. They object not only to the immunity provision but to what they consider the weakening of the FISA court's oversight of government eavesdropping. For example, the government can initiate a wiretap without court permission if "important intelligence" would otherwise be lost. It has a week to file the request for approval with the court, and the court has 30 days to act on it. But if the court objects to how the government is carrying out the wiretap, it could be weeks before those methods are changed or stopped.

"What we have here is the opportunity for the government to commit mass untargeted surveillance," said Texas Democratic Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee.

Opponents also contend the privacy of Americans who communicate with people overseas is not adequately protected. The bill would allow the government to tap the foreigner's calls without court approval, and critics contend that innocent American conversations can be swept up in that.

The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Amendment bill also would:

    * Require FISA court permission to wiretap Americans who are overseas.
    * Prohibit targeting a foreigner to secretly eavesdrop on an American's calls or e-mails without court approval.
    * Allow the FISA court 30 days to review existing but expiring surveillance orders before renewing them.
    * Allow eavesdropping in emergencies without court approval, provided the government files required papers within a week.
    * Prohibit the government from invoking war powers or other authorities to supersede surveillance rules in the future.

[Soldier4Christ]

'American Religious History Week' proposed

Some U.S. House members are calling for passage of a resolution designating the first week each May as "American Religious History Week."

The sponsor and many of the co-sponsors of House Resolution 888 made their appeal before a mostly empty House chamber June 17. All were Republicans except for North Carolina Democrat Mike McIntyre.
 
Congressman Trent Franks (R-Arizona) says the meaning of the First Amendment has been twisted. While Congressman John Carter (R-Texas) argued that Washington, DC, is not a totally secular city.
 
If the measure is approved, the designated week would coincide with the National Day of Prayer, which is held the first Thursday in May.

[Soldier4Christ]

Israel-Hating Republican

Forty-eight-year-old Rima Barakat-Sinclair has been a resident of Denver since 1987. Never having held political office before, she is currently running as a Republican for a State House seat in Colorado’s Sixth District, which is heavily Democratic and features the largest per capita Jewish population in the state. With the self-identified aim of working “for better understanding among peoples of different backgrounds,” Barakat-Sinclair has participated in numerous “interfaith dialogues” to promote “more tolerance” and create “a stronger united America.” She pledges undying allegiance to such ideals as “upholding the Constitution,” defending “individual freedom,” promoting “small government,” enacting “prudent tax and spending policies,” “investing in our children,” guaranteeing “freedom of religion,” and recognizing “the sanctity of human life.”

Oh, and by the way, she is a Muslim activist who considers Israel to be a nation of bloodthirsty monsters who indiscriminately murder innocent Palestinian women and children for no reason other than to satisfy their own beastly compulsions.

While working as a contract translator for CNN in 2003, Mrs. Barakat-Sinclair was part of an interfaith delegation of Christians and Muslims who paid a friendly visit to Yasser Arafat at his Ramallah headquarters, where, since December 2001, Israeli troops had been keeping him under virtual house arrest in an effort to derail his terrorist activities. Favorably impressed by the most prolific Jew-killer since Adolf Hitler, Barakat-Sinclair would later reflect: “I know the accusations about him [Arafat] supporting terror, but he was so confined and surrounded that to me it seemed more like visiting a tourist attraction than visiting a head of state. It was very, very weird.” Arafat’s main message to his visitors, she expanded, was that he felt “robbed of his legacy” because “the peace process had not gone forward.” Added the star-struck woman, “He [Arafat] flirted [with me] a bit, in a very nice way, you know, saying, ‘I like your hair, your long braids.’”

Barakat-Sinclair was a key participant in an October 2005 conference sponsored by Sabeel, a Jerusalem-based organization that supports a “one-state solution” to the Arab-Israeli conflict, where Israel would continue to exist, but not as a Jewish state. Barakat-Sinclair led a workshop on the topic of the so-called “Right of Return” of those Palestinian refugees who (for the most part) voluntarily had left the region during the 1948 Arab invasion of Israel. At that time, the refugees sought out safe haven during what they anticipated would be a brief war that the Arab allies undoubtedly would win, and they fully expected to return to their homes within a few weeks -- once the fighting had stopped and the Jews had been crushed. Instead, the Arab armies were defeated. Barakat-Sinclair now calls for the re-admittance not only of the relatively few surviving people who were among those 725,000 original refugees, but also for the admittance of several millions of their descendants, a move that would transform Israel overnight into an Arab-majority state dominated by Muslims sympathetic to the aims of Hamas and Islamic Jihad.

In a July 2006 interview with CBS television, Barakat-Sinclair stood truth on its head when she condemned Israel’s “imprisonment of five million Palestinians” who, for their part, were “trying to resolve this conflict peacefully.” Israel had responded to those peace efforts, she said, by engaging in “more and more land-grabbing,” by erecting a wall “literally imprisoning hundreds of thousands of people,” and by incarcerating more than “ten thousand prisoners,” including women and children, “for no reason.” “Israeli soldiers now are known to be just bombing and killing babies,” she added for good measure. (Click here for video of this interview.)

Four months later, Barakat-Sinclair charged that a “depraved” Israel routinely carried out “massacres” by means of “the regular use of disproportionate firepower against a trapped population in Gaza” -- thereby demonstrating “the level of contempt with which the Israel government views Palestinian lives.” She told tales of sadistic Israeli soldiers beating handicapped people, gunning down women and babies, opening fire on crowds of beachgoers, breaking into homes at night and murdering entire families in their beds, and riddling children with bullets while the youngsters were merely harvesting strawberries. Likening Israel’s “mass slaughter” of Palestinians to the horrors that existed under “slavery, [South African] apartheid and Nazi concentration camps,” Barakat-Sinclair said that Israel “has turned back the clock to the time of the barbarians” by engaging in “the systematic indiscriminate murder of civilians and the illegal collective imprisonment of a whole nation.”

“As Americans we must understand that the world sees the United States as a collaborator in this endless carnage,” says Barakat-Sinclair. “The F-16s that drop Israeli death decrees upon the Palestinians were ‘Made in the USA.’ We finance and enable the perpetrators to commit these crimes with impunity and in violation of our own laws.”

Just as Barakat-Sinclair places no limits on the lies she is willing to tell about Israel, so is she prepared to go to any lengths to avoid criticizing Islamic terrorists. Indeed she has claimed on the air that the Hamas Charter does not in any way call for Israel’s destruction. Yet that document decrees plainly, “Israel will exist and will continue to exist until Islam will obliterate it, just as it obliterated others before it.” The Charter further contains numerous calls for violent jihad to counter “the Jews’ usurpation of Palestine.”

Barakat-Sinclair also has defended Sheikh Yusuf al-Qaradawi against his critics, calling him “a renowned Muslim scholar.” A disciple of the Muslim Brotherhood -- which Islam expert Robert Spencer describes as “the parent organization of Hamas and al-Qaeda” -- Qaradawi is a supporter of Palestinian terrorism who has been barred from entering the United States since 1999.

Barakat-Sinclair is a member of the Steering Committee of Muslims Intent on Learning and Action (MILA), an organization that seeks to increase Muslims’ involvement in the American political process. Her own current candidacy is a reflection of that mission.

To pass herself off as a conservative Republican, Barakat-Sinclair has had to resort to considerable deception. For instance, she falsely represented herself at the District Assembly as a pro-life opponent of abortion. Her duplicity on this issue eventually would come to light, however, when a researcher tracked down a quote where Barakat-Sinclair had told the Rocky Mountain News on August 14, 2004: “I would like to have a president who is pro-choice.”

Barakat-Sinclair’s opponent in the upcoming Republican primary (slated for August 12th) will be Joshua Sharf, a contract web developer whose professional career also has included work as a talk radio host, a financial analyst, and a defense and intelligence consultant for such projects as satellite systems and missile defense. In 2004 and 2005, Sharf served as an election judge, and in 2006 he was a delegate to the Colorado Republican state assembly. A blogger at his own View From a Height website and at Brent Bozell’s Newsbusters, Sharf is running as a traditional conservative Republican, and not, despite the overwhelmingly Democratic makeup of the district, as an identity candidate.

cont'd

[Soldier4Christ]

Sharf has accurately characterized Barakat-Sinclair as “a terror apologist, and an avowed enemy of Israel, with no credible conservative credentials.” “When engaged in anti-Israel propaganda,” Sharf observes, she usually goes by [the name] Rima Barakat. When engaged in broader political work, she goes by Rima Sinclair.…”

Taking a page directly out of the leftist playbook, Barakat-Sinclair has cast herself as a victim, dismissing Sharf’s criticisms of her affinity for Islamic extremism as evidence of her opponent’s Islamophobic bigotry. Complaining that “these attacks on me have intense emotions of hate and militancy behind them,” she laments that her detractors “hate my religion, my very being.”

In an effort to gain favorable press coverage for her political campaign, Barakat-Sinclair has turned to the Washington Report for Middle East Affairs, a project of the Council for the National Interest (CNI). CNI’s stated mission is “to restore a political environment in America in which voters and their elected officials are free from the undue influence and pressure of a foreign country, namely Israel.” Specifically, the organization calls for: “total withdrawal of Israel from all occupied territory”; “an end to all acts of aggression, provocation, and retaliation by Israel”; “American recognition of a totally independent state of Palestine”; and “an elimination of all unaudited U.S. aid to Israel.” In short, CNI is no friend of Israel.

Barakat-Sinclair’s case is vitally important because it offers a vivid illustration of how a Muslim radical can effectively wage bloodless jihad against the West by infiltrating the government and gaining a platform from which to infect the entire body politic. Her strategy is wholly consistent with the plans that were laid out in a secret 1991 Muslim Brotherhood memorandum on “the General Strategic Goal…in North America.” Explaining that the Brotherhood’s mission was to establish “an effective and...stable Islamic Movement” on the continent, this document outlines a “Civilization-Jihadist Process” for achieving that objective. It states that Muslims “must understand that their work in America is a kind of grand Jihad in eliminating and destroying the Western civilization from within and ‘sabotaging’ its miserable house by their hands...so that...God’s religion [Islam] is made victorious over all other religions.’”

Rima Barakat-Sinclair is the living embodiment of that strategy. Those who oppose this strategy must place their principles above party identification.

[nChrist]

Barakat-Sinclair’s case is vitally important because it offers a vivid illustration of how a Muslim radical can effectively wage bloodless jihad against the West by infiltrating the government and gaining a platform from which to infect the entire body politic. Her strategy is wholly consistent with the plans that were laid out in a secret 1991 Muslim Brotherhood memorandum on “the General Strategic Goal…in North America.” Explaining that the Brotherhood’s mission was to establish “an effective and...stable Islamic Movement” on the continent, this document outlines a “Civilization-Jihadist Process” for achieving that objective. It states that Muslims “must understand that their work in America is a kind of grand Jihad in eliminating and destroying the Western civilization from within and ‘sabotaging’ its miserable house by their hands...so that...God’s religion [Islam] is made victorious over all other religions.’”

Rima Barakat-Sinclair is the living embodiment of that strategy. Those who oppose this strategy must place their principles above party identification.

This would be the best way to conquer this nation, and it appears to be happening now. There is much more than just Islam working from within. The powers of darkness are out in the open and working around the clock. The devil is very skilled in destroying and deceiving - especially the weak. Sadly, many of our self-professed Christians aren't very strong, and many of them might not be Christians at all. When adversity comes, real Christians are still strengthened in the ancient ways:  1) Prayer;  2) THE HOLY SPIRIT OF GOD living in our hearts;  3) GOD'S WORD;  4) CHRIST - OUR LORD AND SAVIOUR forever.  I'm not hinting that Christians enjoy difficult times, but I will do more than hint that Real Christians are Children of the KING OF KINGS regardless of the times or difficulties. In fact, times of difficulty many times makes us STRONGER - not WEAKER!  WHY?  -  We were bought with a price and are not our own. The Promises of GOD to us will be fulfilled regardless of what happens in this short life. AND, WE KNOW THIS WORLD ISN'T OUR HOME! Hopefully, we will yield ourselves for GOD'S Use - regardless of what it is.

Love In Christ,
Tom

Ephesians 1:18-23 NASB I pray that the eyes of your heart may be enlightened, so that you will know what is the hope of His calling, what are the riches of the glory of His inheritance in the saints, and what is the surpassing greatness of His power toward us who believe. These are in accordance with the working of the strength of His might which He brought about in Christ, when He raised Him from the dead and seated Him at His right hand in the heavenly places, far above all rule and authority and power and dominion, and every name that is named, not only in this age but also in the one to come. And He put all things in subjection under His feet, and gave Him as head over all things to the church, which is His body, the fullness of Him who fills all in all.

[Soldier4Christ]

This would be the best way to conquer this nation, and it appears to be happening now. There is much more than just Islam working from within. The powers of darkness are out in the open and working around the clock. The devil is very skilled in destroying and deceiving - especially the weak. Sadly, many of our self-professed Christians aren't very strong, and many of them might not be Christians at all. When adversity comes, real Christians are still strengthened in the ancient ways:  1) Prayer;  2) THE HOLY SPIRIT OF GOD living in our hearts;  3) GOD'S WORD;  4) CHRIST - OUR LORD AND SAVIOUR forever.  I'm not hinting that Christians enjoy difficult times, but I will do more than hint that Real Christians are Children of the KING OF KINGS regardless of the times or difficulties. In fact, times of difficulty many times makes us STRONGER - not WEAKER!  WHY?  -  We were bought with a price and are not our own. The Promises of GOD to us will be fulfilled regardless of what happens in this short life. AND, WE KNOW THIS WORLD ISN'T OUR HOME! Hopefully, we will yield ourselves for GOD'S Use - regardless of what it is.

How true this is.