A new bill to protect the traditions of Christmas has been introduced by Representative Henry Brown ( R-SC) into the US Congress on 12.8.09

H.Res.951 – Expressing the sense of the House of Representatives that the symbols and traditions of Christmas should be protected for use by those who celebrate Christmas.

Protect Christmas? Mmmm, yes, I see. The world has suddenly been transformed into a Rankin and Bass claymation holiday special. The evil Heat Miser will soon come into town to melt all the holiday snow …. oops, I mean Christmas snow.

I get a feeling this bill could easily be crossing more than a few church/state separation lines.

Text of Bill

Expressing the sense of the House of Representatives that the symbols and traditions of Christmas should be protected for use by those who celebrate Christmas.

Whereas Christmas is a national holiday celebrated on December 25; and

Whereas the Framers intended that the First Amendment of the Constitution, in prohibiting the establishment of religion, would not prohibit any mention of religion or reference to God in civic dialog: Now, therefore, be it

Resolved, That the House of Representatives–

(1) recognizes the importance of the symbols and traditions of Christmas;

(2) strongly disapproves of attempts to ban references to Christmas; and

(3) expresses support for the use of these symbols and traditions by those who celebrate Christmas.

Definitely an odd bill written by some one with a pretty tenuous grasp of the first amendment.

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof;

Meaning, taking a neutral stance. Pretty simple, neither helping nor hindering. This bill would be helping and would thereby not be neutral.

Not to mention, most of the atrocious offenses against Christmas, at least the ones that I’ve seen causing boycotts by religious groups, are just businesses that decide to express inclusive messages during the holidays. Not really a lot a government bill can do about that without micro-managing private industry.

Silly, silly stuff.

And now, a lesson on quote mining and McExperts “interpreting” data.

Or: Why Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck, and Alex Jones are fucking idiots that don’t even have the ability to read emails written in English.

Be forewarned, you’ll have to watch a 10 minute video and the only yelling or crying is done by the aforementioned idiots (hmmm, if scientific papers were read by someone either yelling or crying would conservatives start paying attention?).

Former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee said he was aware of Maurice Clemmons’ long and violent criminal history when he commuted his 108-year prison sentence, but he couldn’t have foreseen the deadly consequence of his act.

Of course not, how could anyone know that releasing a killer would give him the chance to kill again?

What I want to know is, why the hell is this or any other governor given the power to release a dangerous criminal? Who thought that this was a good idea? Criminals are put into prison for a reason, and it’s not punishment: it’s to get them off they streets so that they do not harm others. They were put into prison by our legal system and one man should not be able to, by the swipe of a pen, undo everything. Claiming to be able to forecast the future actually would be a better excuse than the real one: that we somehow have grandfathered into our system the god/king mentality that the leader of a certain political area has the power to undo any law they see fit.

The mental state of criminally insane people should be up to experts in the criminally insane. Even then, mistakes might be made, but at least it won’t be because of the whim of a faith head and the good ol’ boy network of patting other Christians on the back.

But, would an expert panel have released Clemmons? Not according to this:

During a pretrial hearing, he hid a piece of metal in his sock, court documents said. Before the start of another hearing, he grabbed a padlock off his holding cell and threw it at a court bailiff. He missed, and the lock hit his mother, who had come to bring him clothes.

“That’s the one word that came to my mind that I remembered about him, was that he was mean,” said W.A. McCormick, a deputy prosecuting attorney at the time. “He was shackled in court and deputies placed behind him while he was tried because he was such a security risk.”

Clemmons continued to lash out violently behind the prison fences in Pine Bluff, Arkansas.

“Over and over again,” said Larry Jegley, the prosecutor who put Clemmons away.

“Failure to obey, engaging in sexual activity,” he rattled off the charges as he flipped through Clemmons’ prison record, “failure to obey, possession or introduction of drugs, firearms.”

McCormick said he told the parole board — repeatedly, in writing — that Clemmons should remain in prison. And he would have opposed it once again if he had known that Huckabee was considering commuting Clemmons’ sentence.

Not only should Huckabee not given clemency to Clemons, he should not have been able to. This man (Huckabee) is a danger to society.

Religious fundamentalists are annoying and dangerous. So, Barack Obama decided to “refocus” efforts against al Qaeda in Afghanistan. So, is Obama for taking out all religious nuts that want to force everyone to live by their bronze age rules, or just Islamic ones? al Qaeda is indeed a pain in the ass, but isn’t it a bit bigoted to take them out in a military fashion but not even have the courage to speak up to the wing nut jobs in America, especially since they’ve already been so insulting?

Glenn Beck, master of dicking with American consciousness for profit, has dissed Sarah Palin’s invitation to be her running mate in 2012 with a few choice words.

“I was just thinking, what, I’m going to take a back seat to a chick? Go shoot a bear, make some stew, I’m hungry in here.”

“So while she’s considering it … I just want her to know, I’m ruling it out. A Palin-Beck ticket, I’m absolutely ruling it out,” Beck said. “I’m just saying, Beck-Palin, I’ll consider. But Palin-Beck — can you imagine what an administration with the two of us would be like? She’d be yapping or something, I’d say, ‘I’m sorry, why am I hearing your voice? I’m not in the kitchen.’

Will he lose fans over this sexist remark? Probably not. Beck’s style, of course, is to say everything in a mocking condescending way so he can later deny responsibility for anything he says. Does he dislike Palin? Or just hate women? Oh, neither, it’s all just a joke that I’m sure everying in the audience in in on. He doesn’t have any woman haters or bigots in his audience, they’re all bright, educated, civilized people that respect each other and are only joking around.

This sort of fuzzy correspondence is nothing new in the conservative movement. They seem to base their entire platform on it. During the last election, the McCain campaign felt the need to encode their disregard for the Establishment Clause with the phrase “religion in the public square” (any follower of a dying and rising savior god that wants to get up and a stump and start make a speech sure can do so, but they have about 20 seconds of my attention to say something interesting).

Of late, some Funda-gelicals have felt the need to hide presidential death threats with Bible verses.

Chuck Norris, apparently, believes he has lost his freedoms, but can’t seen to stick his finger on what these freedoms are.

If the leaders of these movements can’t be more concrete with their intentions, then do their backers even know what it is that they are backing? I have a feeling they don’t. As this video of Sarah Palin fans shows. They define themselves as supporters, but when asked why, they’re not quite sure.

They are so excited by buzz phrases and personality that they have no idea what Palin’s actual plans are.

Fluffy messages and feel good/bad words are not a plan make. Actual honest to goodness intentions must be laid out. Otherwise we wind up with a bunch of angry people that have no idea what the hell they are angry about. But, if starting a mob and using them as your pawns is all you’re interested in, well, then I guess you couldn’t do better than the conservative movement. Vagueness is the great leveler.

Time for another nativity in a courthouse debacle. Yep, it looks like the Right’s infamous “War on Christmas” is beginning early this year. This time, it’s in the Arkansas state capitol building whose Christmas decorations are up and include … a nativity scene! However, when the Arkansas Society of Freethinkers created a Solstice display for inclusion, it was denied.

After last years hullabaloo in WA, you would have thought that these Faith-heads would get the picture. Their stated reason for denying the Solstice decor? It was:

“…not consistent with the holiday tone that our office is striving to create on the Capitol grounds during the holiday season.”

Well, consistency is a virtue, or so I’ve heard. But, when it comes to favoring Christianity over other religious orientations, I think putting up a placard should be a pretty minor issue. Besides, from my studies of religion, I have come to the understanding that Christians believe that their “God” created the entire universe. Which would, by the way, include the Earth and the sun. Coincidentally, these two objects, once you understand that they rotate and wobble a bit, are all you really need to get … the solstices.

So, what’s their problem? Wouldn’t a solstice scene only be glorifying their creator? I guess the problem would be that it would include non-Christians during the holiday season. And that, apparently, cannot be done.

Well, needless to say, the ACLU is looking into it. Perhaps we should also get their mothers to give them a talking to as well. If they cannot choose to be nice to others, perhaps they need to be told.

With bigots like this working in the government, who the fuck needs any laws against any sort of marriage?

A Louisiana justice of the peace said he refused to issue a marriage license to an interracial couple out of concern for any children the couple might have.

And, for the record of dumbest quote of all time!

“I’m not a racist. I just don’t believe in mixing the races that way”

Keith Bardwell, justice of the peace in Tangipahoa Parish, tries to treat everybody equally by refusing to marry all interracial couples. So, apparently, that makes it all fair and equal. Yep. His logic, not mine. Looks like somebody missed a couple of logic classes.

Apparently, the Conservative Christian lead group Liberty Council is going to attempt to use mind control to get the mean and nasty liberals to do their bidding.

“We believe in the power of God. We are commanded to pray for our leaders, even those we disagree with,” says Mat Staver, who, as head of Liberty Counsel, spends most of his time fighting for Christian causes in court. “And so we are asking people to pray so that our leaders are restored to right thinking.”

I don’t know what else you would call it. Remote hypnosis? They are attempting to change the way some other person thinks with the power of their minds. Or, rather, the power of their minds to manipulate an invisible being that will then, in turn, manipulate these other people’s minds. So, that makes it “not crazy” somehow? I’ve totally given up referring to any of theses people as religious, cause they’re not. They’re superstitious primitives. They will never be able to see how silly their “magic” and “witchcraft” is. Or even that it isn’t working.

When Barney Frank was notified that he was a target of the attempted mind hijacking he said:

“They didn’t bother to tell me,” he says. “Maybe they thought I would find out by revelation.”

The Lodi City Council voted 5-0 to keep prayer in the public square town hall meetings. Only, according to this link, they got the vote by threatening to blackmail the mayor unless he voted in their favor.

From the link:

“Secret emails now available at www.prayinjesusname.org show that Lodi Mayor Larry Hansen changed his previous plan to vote against Jesus, two days ago on 28 September. Coincidentally, that same day he was notified by a Lodi newspaper that The Pray In Jesus Name Project would publish highway billboards announcing his vote, if he had voted against Jesus, likely damaging his chances of re-election next year.

“The timeline on our web-site, quoting Mayor Hansen’s own emails and words, clearly shows he suddenly changed his vote upon hearing of our plan to purchase billboards,” said Chaplain Klingenschmitt who led a 400-person Jesus rally in Lodi last month. “

According to the proposal, the prayer is supposed to uncensored and not favoring any religion, though it’s sponsored by the “Pray In Jesus Name Project” which sounds a bit Christo-specific, to me. Not to mention all the mentions of Jesus-this, Jesus-that in the “secret email” message.

“This victory should inspire legislators across America, that 85% of polled voters want you to allow public prayers ‘in Jesus name,’ even in public venues,” said Chaplain Klingenschmitt.

Only, they don’t want “public prayers”, they want prayers in government settings, specifically. Otherwise they could pray anywhere else (which they can), at any other time (which they can). What they want is to make a public show of them being “pious” in a government setting so they can claim the government is endorsing it. They have shown that they are not above playing dirty pool to get their way. They shame and blackmail others to do their bidding; they’re just not good people. Knowing what these people will resort to, would any non-Christian or atheist feel safe giving a prayer during the town hall meeting? It’s harassment. Christ, just the time added to the meetings is enough to vote no. It’s a waste of everyone’s time.

I’m not sure what he was talking about, Katie Couric isn’t sure, and, as it turns out, Glenn Beck doesn’t know what he was talking about either. He believes Barak Obama hates “white culture”. When asks what he means by “white culture” he plays games, squirms in his chair, and looks a bit like Micheal Scott on the Office. Perhaps he was looking for a frog to boil.

When a person that is paid to talk is speechless, he might be a bit ashamed of wait he said.