OBAMA LIED!--Obama Attended Hate America Sermon
http://newsmax.com/kessler/Obama_hate_America_sermon/2008/03/16/80870.html
Contrary to Senator Barack Obama’s claim that he never heard his pastor Jeremiah A. Wright, Jr. preach hatred of America, Obama was in the pews last July 22 when the minister blamed the “white arrogance” of America’s Caucasian majority for the world’s suffering, especially the oppression of blacks.
Senator Obama has sought to separate himself from his pastor’s incendiary remarks, issuing a statement Friday rejecting them as “inflammatory and appalling” but failing to renounce Wright himself for his venomous and paranoid denunciations of America.
In his press release, Obama claimed, “The statements that Rev. Wright made that are the cause of this controversy were not statements I personally heard him preach while I sat in the pews of Trinity [United Church of Christ] or heard him utter in private conversation.”
Appearing on cable news shows this past weekend, Obama claimed when he heard Wright make such comments as “God damn America” he was “shocked” – implying the reverend had not used such derogatory language in any of the church services he attended over the past two decades.
If Obama’s claims are true that he was completely unaware that Wright’s trademark preaching style at the Trinity United Church of Christ has targeted “white” America and Israel, he would have been one of the few people in Chicago to be so uninformed. Wright’s reputation for spewing hate is well known.
In fact, Obama was present in the South Side Chicago church on July 22 last year when Jim Davis, a freelance correspondent for Newsmax, attended services along with Obama. [See: ”Obama’s Church: Cauldron of Division.”
In his sermon that day, Wright tore into America, referring to the “United States of White America” and lacing his sermon with expletives as Obama listened. Hearing Wright’s attacks on his own country, Obama had the opportunity to walk out, but Davis said the senator sat in his pew and nodded in agreement.
Addressing the Iraq war, Wright thundered, “Young African-American men” were “dying for nothing.” The “illegal war,” he shouted, was “based on Bush’s lies” and is being “fought for oil money.”
Obama’s most famous celebrity backer, Oprah Winfrey began attending Wright’s church in 1984. Last year, Newsmax magazine reported that Winfrey abruptly stopped attending years ago, and suggested that she did so to distance herself from Wright’s inflammatory rhetoric. She soon found herself a target of Wright, who excoriated her for having broken with “traditional faith.”
The Reverend Wright’s anti-white theology that Senator Obama expressed surprise over is evident on the church’s website. The site says the congregation subscribes to what it calls the Black Value System, which is described as a disavowal of “our racist competitive society” and the pursuit of “middle-classness.” That is defined as a way for American society to “snare” blacks rather than “killing them off directly” or “placing them in concentration camps,” just as the country structures “an economic environment that induces captive youth to fill the jails and prisons.”
“In the 21st century, white America got a wake-up call after 9/11/01,” Wright wrote in the church-affiliated magazine Trumpet four years after the attacks. “White America and the western world came to realize that people of color had not gone away, faded into the woodwork or just ‘disappeared’ as the Great White West kept on its merry way of ignoring black concerns.”
The Relationship Unravels
Senator Obama now is attempting to minimize his long and close relationship with the controversial minister.
On Friday, John McCain’s campaign distributed a Wall Street Journal op-ed “Obama and the Minister” written under my byline based on my reporting for Newsmax going back to early January of this year.
The op-ed included details of a sermon Wright gave at Howard University blaming America for starting the AIDS virus, training professional killers, importing drugs, shamelessly supporting Israel, and creating a racist society that would never elect a black man as president.
Obama’s campaign quickly responded to the Wall Street Journal op-ed, posting a statement on the Huffington Post. In his statement, Obama acknowledged that some of Wright’s statements have been “inflammatory and appalling.”
Saying he strongly condemns Wright’s comments, Obama continued, “I categorically denounce any statement that disparages our great country or serves to divide us from our allies. I also believe that words that degrade individuals have no place in our public dialogue, whether it’s on the campaign stump or in the pulpit. In sum, I reject outright the statements by Rev. Wright that are at issue.” [emphasis added]
Again, Obama moved to narrowly distance himself from specific comments Wright had made, while still praising his minister in recent interviews for leading him to Jesus and preaching a “social gospel.”
Obama went on to claim that he first learned about Wright’s controversial statements when he began his presidential campaign. But this assertion conflicts with the fact that just before Obama’s nationally televised campaign kickoff rally on Feb. 10, 2007, the candidate disinvited Wright from giving the public invocation.
At the time, Wright explained: “When [Obama’s] enemies find out that in 1984 I went to Tripoli” to visit Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi with Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan, “a lot of his Jewish support will dry up quicker than a snowball in hell.”
According to Wright, Obama then told him, “'You can get kind of rough in the sermons, so what we’ve decided is that it’s best for you not to be out there in public.'” Still, Obama and his family prayed privately with Wright just before the presidential announcement.
Apparently Obama never foresaw Wright’s sermons making national television or becoming a sensation on YouTube. But lending graphic detail to the saga, ABC News and other networks began running a 2003 sermon in which Wright said, “The government gives them the drugs, builds bigger prisons, passes a three-strike law and then wants us to sing ‘God Bless America.’ No, no, no, God damn America, that’s in the Bible, for killing innocent people ... God damn America for treating our citizens as less than human. God damn America for as long as she acts like she is God and she is supreme.”
Obama has described Wright as a sounding board and mentor. Wright is one of the first people Obama thanked after his election to the Senate in 2004. Obama consulted Wright before deciding to run for president. The title of Obama’s bestseller “The Audacity of Hope” comes from one of Wright’s sermons. Obama’s “Yes We Can!” slogan is one of Wright’s exhortations.
Apologists for Wright have said that what he says is normal in black churches, and many blacks claim such preaching cannot be understood by whites.
“If you’re black, it’s hard to say what you truly think and not upset white people,” the New York Times quoted James Cone as saying. Cone is a professor at Union Theological Seminary and the father of what is known as black liberation theology.
But Juan Williams, a Fox News commentator and author of “Enough: The Phony Leaders, Dead-End Movements, and Culture of Failure That Are Undermining Black America,” tells Newsmax that Wright’s sermons reflect “the victim mindset that is so self-defeating in the black community and one that is played on by weak black leadership that chooses to have black people identified as victims rather than inspiring them as people who have overcome. In posing as victims, they say the most prejudiced and vicious things, not only about whites but about America. They call it theology. In fact, it’s nothing but bigotry.”
In failing to condemn Wright himself and claiming that he was unaware of the preacher’s hate-filled speech, Obama is continuing a longstanding pattern.
Obama often refers to Wright as being "like an old uncle, who sometimes says things I don't agree with," But Wright is not Obama’s “uncle” — a person born into a blood relationship — but a man he has cultivated for decades as a close friend, mentor and adviser.
After Newsmax broke the story on Jan. 14 that Wright’s church gave an award to Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan in December for lifetime achievement, Obama again sought to denounce his minister’s action without criticizing Wright himself.
Like Wright, Farrakhan has repeatedly made hate-filled statements targeting Jews (calling Judaism a “gutter religion”), whites, America, and homosexuals. He has called whites “blue-eyed devils” and the “anti-Christ.” He has described Jews as “bloodsuckers” who control the government, the media, and some black organizations.
After the Newsmax story, Obama issued a statement purportedly addressing the issue.
"I decry racism and anti-Semitism in every form and strongly condemn the anti-Semitic statements made by Minister Farrakhan," Obama said.
Again, Obama was careful not to condemn Farrakhan himself or his minister and friend who had spoken adoringly of Farrakhan and put his church behind the award to the controversial Nation of Islam leader.
“When Minister Farrakhan speaks, black America listens,” Trumpet quoted Wright as saying. “His depth on analysis [sic] when it comes to the racial ills of this nation is astounding and eye-opening. He brings a perspective that is helpful and honest.”
Obama adroitly said, “I assume that Trumpet magazine made its own decision to honor Farrakhan based on his efforts to rehabilitate ex-offenders, but it is not a decision with which I agree.”
In fact, not only is Trumpet owned and produced by Wright’s church out of the church’s offices, Wright’s daughters serve as publisher and executive editor.
Having gotten away with sidestepping Wright’s adoring comments about Farrakhan, Obama told Jewish leaders flatly in Cleveland on Jan. 24 that the award was because of Farrakhan’s work with ex-offenders. To date, no news outlet has pointed out that Obama’s claim is false.
Obama went on to explain away Wright’s anti-Zionist statements as being rooted in his anger over the Jewish state’s support for South Africa under its previous policy of apartheid. As with his claim that the award to Farrakhan was made because of his work with ex-offenders, Obama made that up. Wright’s statements denouncing Israel have not been qualified in any way.
On Fox News’ Hannity & Colmes on Saturday, Obama said he would have quit the church if he had “repeatedly” been present when Wright made inflammatory statements. He was not asked why he did not quit the church when it gave an award to Farrakhan.
Having considered Wright a friend and mentor for two decades, Obama now often mentions that his pastor recently retired. Wright suggested to the New York Times last year that he and Obama might have to do something of a distancing act in the run up to the election.
"If Barack gets past the primary, he might have to publicly distance himself from me," Wright was quoted by The New York Times. "I said it to Barack personally, and he said, ‘Yeah, that might have to happen.'"
Obama’s Church Fires Back
http://elections.foxnews.com/2008/03/16/obama-pastors-church-fires-back/
The Chicago church attended by Barack Obama is fighting back against media coverage of its controversial pastor, issuing a statement on Sunday, saying reports on the inflammatory remarks by Rev. Jeremiah Wright are an attempt to attack “the history of the African American church.”
“Reverend Dr. Jeremiah A. Wright Jr.’s character is being assassinated in the public sphere because he has preached a social gospel on behalf of oppressed women, children and men in America and around the globe,” the leaders of Trinity United Church of Christ wrote Sunday in a statement distributed to the media.
Claiming that Wright’s 36 years as pastor of the church — the largest United Church of Christ congregation, with 8,000 members — is being demeaned, Rev. John H. Thomas, UCC general minister and president, said, “It saddens me to see news stories reporting such a caricature of a congregation that has been such a blessing to the UCC’s Wider Church mission … It’s time for us to say ‘No’ to these attacks and declare that we will not allow anyone to undermine or destroy the ministries of any of our congregations in order to serve their own narrow political or ideological ends.”
Neither Wright nor Obama was present at the church on Sunday, but all of talk news has been on the subject of the pastor, whose many sermons have been captured on video and replayed across television and the Internet over the past few weeks.
Some of the more flamboyant sermons have included statements saying that the U.S. created the AIDS virus to kill African Americans and that the United States was asking for the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks because it had supported “state-sponsored terrorism” against black South Africans and Palestinian
Obama’s campaign has tried to distance the candidate from his Wright, the man who coined the phrase “the audacity of hope” that became the title of Obama’s bestselling book.
Speaking in a conference call on Sunday, Obama’s advisers acknowledged that the pastor was supposed to speal at the announcement of Obama’s presidential campaign last year, but was cut in part because they knew he was controversial, and didn’t want him to become a target or distraction, both of which he nows appears to be.
But even as attention is focused on Obama, Hillary Clinton’s supporters have refrained from pouncing on the opportunity to link Obama to his 20-year-long spiritual adviser.
“I mean, as you know, I prefer Senator Clinton for a whole lot of reasons, but I don’t cast aspersions on Senator Obama for what somebody else said,” Sen. Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., told “FOX News Sunday.”
Calling Trinity’s social justice and outreach programs “inclusive and global” Moss added that not much has changed since the era of Martin Luther King’s sermons for equality. He claimed that African American churches, “born out of the crucible of slavery and the legacy of prophetic African American preachers since slavery” continue to treat marginalized victims of social and economic injustices in the face of prejudice.
“This is an attack on the legacy of the African American Church which led and continues to lead the fight for human rights in America and around the world,” he said, adding “The African American Church community continues to face bomb threats, death threats, and their ministers’ characters are assassinated because they teach and preach prophetic social concerns for social justice. Sunday is still the most segregated hour in America.”
'Fox News Sunday' Prods Obama on No-Show
http://www.newsmax.com/politics/obama_fox_news/2008/03/16/80812.html
WASHINGTON -- Hoping to prod Barack Obama into appearing on its show, "Fox News Sunday" launched the "Obama Watch," a weekly update on the number of days the Democratic presidential candidate has failed to appear on the program.
Host Chris Wallace said Sunday that Obama promised him in March 2006 that he would appear, but the Illinois senator has since demurred.
Since then, New York Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, Obama's rival for the Democratic presidential nomination, has been a guest at least twice since then, and Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., the likely Republican nominee for president, has shown up at least a half dozen times.
"Many of you have sent us e-mails asking why the senator won't come on 'Fox News Sunday' and face tough questioning," Wallace said toward the end of the hourlong broadcast. "It has now been 730 days, 13 hours, 53 minutes and nine _ no, 10 seconds and counting since Obama agreed to be a guest on 'Fox News Sunday.'"
"Tune in next week for the latest," he said.
Obama's campaign did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
McCain Arrives in Baghdad for Surprise Visit
http://elections.foxnews.com/2008/03/16/mccain-arrives-in-baghdad-for-surprise-visit/
BAGHDAD — Sen. John McCain, the likely Republican presidential nominee, arrived in Baghdad on Sunday for a visit with Iraqi and U.S. diplomatic and military officials.
The trip by McCain, who has linked his political future to U.S. military success in the nearly five-year-old war, coincided with the 20th anniversary of a horrific chemical weapons attack in northern Iraq.
McCain met with Deputy Prime Minister Barham Saleh and planned to meet with Gen. David Petraeus, the top U.S. commander in Iraq, according to the U.S. Embassy. Further details of McCain’s visit, which had been anticipated, were not being released for security reasons, the embassy said.
Before leaving the United States, McCain, one of the foremost proponents of the March 2003 U.S.-led invasion, said the trip to the Middle East and Europe was for fact-finding purposes, not a campaign photo opportunity.
But he expressed public worries that militants in Iraq might try to influence the November general election.
“Yes, I worry about it,” he said, responding to a question during a campaign appearance in Pennsylvania. “And I know they pay attention, because of the intercepts we have of their communications.”
McCain, the senior Republican on the Senate Armed Services Committee, was accompanied by Sens. Joe Lieberman, an independent from Connecticut, and Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., two top supporters of his presidential ambitions.
The weeklong trip will take McCain to Israel, Britain and France, and include his first meeting with British Prime Minister Gordon Brown. He also is expected to meet with French President Nicolas Sarkozy, Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and other Israeli officials.
His focus in Iraq was thought to be the drop in sectarian violence and U.S. and civilian casualties since last summer. Exactly what was discussed, however, remained unclear since numerous telephone calls to aides traveling with McCain went unanswered.
Elsewhere, Kurds in northern Iraq commemorated the anniversary of the chemical weapons attack in Halabja, near the Iranian border, with solemn observances. The streets were empty and heavily patrolled by Iraqi security forces.
Saddam Hussein ordered the 1988 attack as part of a scorched-earth campaign to crush a Kurdish rebellion in the north, which was seen as aiding Iran near the end of its war with Iraq. Saddam was executed for other crimes against humanity before he could face trial for the attacks.
McCain’s trip to Iraq is his eighth. Last November, he met with Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki during the U.S. Thanksgiving holiday.
On a visit last April, the Arizona senator criticized news reports he said focused unfairly on violence, and said Americans were not getting a “full picture” of progress in the security crackdown in the capital.
McCain was combative toward reporters’ questions in the heavily guarded Green Zone, and responded testily to a question about his comment that it was safe to walk some Baghdad streets. He later acknowledged traveling with armed U.S. military escorts.
Violence has dropped throughout the capital since, with an influx of some 30,000 additional U.S. soldiers sent to Iraq last year. The U.S. military has said attacks have fallen by about 60 percent since last February.
Still, violence continues in some parts of the country, according to reports from police officials who spoke on condition of anonymity because they weren’t authorized to speak to the media.
On Sunday, a parked car bomb exploded in western Baghdad’s Mansour neighborhood, killing one person and wounding two others. Two civilians and nine others were wounded in Mosul when a suicide bomber detonated his explosive vest, police said. A roadside bomb killed another person in the northwestern city.
Just outside Baqouba, the capital of restive Diyala province, three people were killed in clashes between police and a faction of radical Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr’s Mahdi Army, police said. In the city itself, gunmen killed a city hall employee, police said.
Police also found the bullet-riddled bodies of at least 16 people in Baghdad, Muqdadiyah, Mosul and the southern cities of Basra and Kut, where Shiite militia violence has been on the rise.
In Washington, two of McCain’s colleagues who support Democrats for president, said senators — including candidate McCain — have the right to visit various parts of the world.
But, said Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif: “I think it would have probably have been better if he took members who were not so closely identified with his campaign. But this is indicated to be a congressional visit.
“Obviously the world’s going to watch it, and we’ll know whether it’s exploited for other reasons. I don’t believe it will be, but we’ll see,” Feinstein, who supports New York Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton for president, said on CNN’s “Late Edition.” She appeared with Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., who supports Illinois Sen. Barack Obama.
Oklahoma Rep. Sally Kern on YouTube Clip: Homosexuality Bigger Threat Than Terrorism
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,338271,00.html
OKLAHOMA CITY — A YouTube audio clip of a state lawmaker's screed against homosexuality, which she called a bigger threat than terrorism, has outraged gay activists and brought death threats rolling in.
"The homosexual agenda is destroying this nation, OK, it's just a fact," Rep. Sally Kern said recently to a gathering of fellow Republicans outside the Capitol.
"Studies show no society that has totally embraced homosexuality has lasted, you know, more than a few decades. So it's the death knell in this country.
"I honestly think it's the biggest threat that our nation has, even more so than terrorism or Islam, which I think is a big threat," she said.
The former school teacher has been a magnet for coast-to-coast condemnation, including a jab from comedian Ellen Degeneres, ever since someone posted her comments on the Internet last week. State police said they are investigating death threats against her.
Back home in the Bible Belt, though, the response has been mixed. Kern has gotten support from her fellow Republicans.
"I would submit to you that the vast majority of the folks in our caucus, particularly those who consider themselves conservative, stand with and support Sally," said state Rep. Randy Terrill.
Democratic Gov. Brad Henry, however, said Kern's views are not representative of most Oklahomans. He said politicians should "think before you speak."
"To have equated the gay community with terrorism ... and to have called us the biggest threat to America is to dehumanize gay people in the worst possible way," Denis Dison, spokesman for the Washington-based Gay & Lesbian Victory Fund, said Friday.
That group's leaders fear remarks such as Kern's coming from an elected official could lead to violence against gays.
Kern, who is finishing her second term, has tried unsuccessfully to pass bills to rid libraries' children's sections of books that have homosexual themes. She told the group that school children are being indoctrinated by gay activists.
"We're not teaching facts and knowledge any more, folks," she said. "We're teaching indoctrination, OK, and they are going after our young children, as young as 2 years of age, to try to teach them a homosexual lifestyle is an acceptable lifestyle."
In the same speech, she said gays are "infiltrating city councils" across the country.
"It spreads, OK, and this stuff is deadly and it's spreading and it will destroy our young people," she said. "It will destroy this nation."
Kern said she made these comments on about four different occasions to small groups of Republicans, and she thinks the recording was made at one of these meetings in January. Various recordings of it have generated more than a million hits on YouTube.
Kern's office received more than 23,000 e-mails in less than a week, mostly condemning her views, and thousands more to her home computer, many of them "vulgar, vile and profane," she said.
Kern said she has no regrets for her statements and denies she was gay-bashing. Her Christian faith teachers her to be loving to individuals, but not their lifestyle, she said.
Some people, including Degeneres, did not take her remarks that way.
"Hi, it's Ellen Degeneres, the gay one," the comedian said when she left a message in a call to Kern's office during her TV show this week.
Degeneres said she wanted to talk to Kern about some "misinformation."
"I'm trying to figure out which society has disappeared that I didn't know of," she said.
Kern said she had no interest in talking to the entertainer. "That would be like throwing myself into the lion's den and I'm not going to do that," she said Thursday.
Kern, the wife of a Baptist minister, said "everything is being played out of proportion."
Most of Kern's colleagues have steered clear of commenting on her statements, but some say the state's image is taking a beating.
"I think it is a shame those type of things tend to show that we are a people who seem not willing to look at the big picture of the world and recognize there are other people out there with other religions, other viewpoints. I think we are somewhat intolerant of that," said Rep. David Braddock, a Democrat.
Last summer, more than two dozen Oklahoma House members refused complimentary copies of the Quran from an ethnic advisory council, offending Muslims. Republican Rex Duncan led the boycott, condemning Islam as a religion and saying most Oklahomans do not endorse "the idea of killing innocent women and children in the name of ideology."
Like Kern, Duncan stood by his comments.
Rabbi Russell Fox of Oklahoma City's Emanuel Synagogue said Oklahoma is becoming more exposed to different religions and cultures and some citizens and leaders "are having a hard time making an adjustment."
Fox said he did not believe Oklahomans were necessarily less tolerant than people in other areas of the country, "but I think we have a political culture that plays upon and uses intolerance in some very unhealthy ways."
"It's demagoguery, that's the old word for it," he said
Crowds Trace Jesus' Path on Palm Sunday
http://www.newsmax.com/international/mideast_palm_sunday/2008/03/16/80845.html
JERUSALEM -- Thousands of Christians from around the world celebrated Palm Sunday by walking the path they believe Jesus rode on his donkey as he entered Jerusalem days before his crucifixion.
The procession with the top Roman Catholic cleric in the Holy Land, Patriarch Michel Sabbah, started at the Bethphage Church, where tradition says Jesus mounted the donkey. Participants walked up to the Mount of Olives, then down to the ancient stone walls of the Old City.
Marching pilgrims strummed guitars, some of them wearing "I love Jesus" shirts, as they braved unseasonable heat in the city.
Palm Sunday commemorates Jesus' followers shaking branches to greet him as he entered Jerusalem. The festivities mark the start of Holy Week when, according to the New Testament, Jesus was betrayed by Judas, crucified on Good Friday and then resurrected on Easter Sunday.
Michelle Alignay, 28, a preschool teacher from San Diego, California, was visiting the Holy Land for the first time.
"All your life you grow up learning and now I am finally able to walk in the footsteps of Jesus and see where it all happened," Alignay said. "It wasn't just a story."
Even some Jewish Israelis joined the procession this year as part of a course they are taking called "Between Judaism and Christianity." In the courtyard of the Bethphage Church, their Hebrew speech mixed with the Arabic of the Palestinian teenage scouts from the West Bank city of Ramallah.
Israel granted the Palestinian scouts special permission to enter Jerusalem for the festivities. For many years, during the height of Israeli-Palestinian fighting, they were not allowed in, the scouts said.
Outside, hundreds of believers crowded the street, singing hymns.
Some pilgrims said they were wary of coming, concerned by recent bloodshed, including a Palestinian shooting attack earlier this month on a Jewish religious school in Jerusalem in which eight Israelis were killed, as well as violence in the Gaza Strip and southern Israel.
Taxi drivers said Sunday the number of tourists showed that few had been scared away by the violence. The fighting that began in 2001 seriously damaged the local tourism industry, but it has rebounded in recent years.
Israel's separation barrier, built to keep out suicide bombers, passes right next to the church's olive grove in the form of a cement wall, blocking the way some pilgrims used to walk from nearby Bethany, in the West Bank town of Azariya, to the holy sites in east Jerusalem. Palestinians complain it cuts Jerusalem off from the West Bank and takes some of their land.
Christians believe that Jesus stopped in Bethany at the house of a leper on his way to Jerusalem.
Sitting in the Bethphage Church's anemone-speckled field as an Israeli border police jeep sped by along the cement wall, tourist Maria Irene, 76, said she was making the procession with her sister for their 13th time.
"Jesus is here. Here he saved humanity," said Irene, a retired doctor from Porto in northern Portugal. "At home we pray every day for peace in Israel."
Police investigate London faith-hate attack against priest
http://www.christiantoday.com/article/police.investigate.london.faith.hate.attack.against.priest/17369.htm
LONDON - Police are investigating an alleged faith-hate crime after a priest was attacked in a churchyard in east London.
Canon Michael Ainsworth suffered cuts and bruises after being hit in the grounds of St George-in-the-East church in Canon Street Road near Whitechapel.
Two Asian youths are alleged to have attacked the 57-year-old churchman while hurling insults at his occupation, police said.
The incident took place at about 7 p.m. on March 5.
Pope Issues Strong Appeal for Peace in Iraq
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,338276,00.html
VATICAN CITY — Pope Benedict XVI denounced the 5-year-old Iraqi war and issued one of his strongest appeals for peace in the country Sunday, days after the kidnapped Chaldean Catholic archbishop of Mosul was found dead.
"Enough with the slaughters. Enough with the violence. Enough with the hatred in Iraq!" Benedict said to applause at the end of Palm Sunday Mass in St. Peter's Square.
On Thursday, the body of Archbishop Paulos Faraj Rahho was found near the northern Iraqi city of Mosul, from where he had been abducted on Feb. 29. No one has claimed responsibility, but al-Qaida retains its last urban stronghold in the area.
Benedict has called Rahho's death an "inhuman act of violence" that offended human dignity.
On Sunday, Benedict praised Rahho for his loyalty to Christ and refusal to abandon his flock despite many threats and difficulties.
He recalled that Rahho's death came as the Catholic Church opened Holy Week, the most solemn week in the liturgical calendar, in which the faithful recall the suffering and death of Jesus Christ.
Benedict said Rahho's dedication to the Church and his death compelled him to "raise a strong and sorrowful cry" to denounce the violence in Iraq spawned by the war that he said had destroyed civilian life.
"At the same time, I make an appeal to the Iraqi people, who for the past five years have borne the consequences of a war that provoked the breakup of their civil and social life," Benedict said.
He urged them to raise their heads and reconstruct their life through "reconciliation, forgiveness, justice and coexistence among tribal, ethnic and religious groups."
The Vatican strongly opposed the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq. In its aftermath, Benedict has frequently criticized attacks against Iraqi Christians by Islamic extremists. Last year, he urged U.S. President George W. Bush to keep the safety of Iraqi Christians in mind.
Benedict is due to preside over a memorial service at the Vatican on Monday in honor of Rahho. Typically, the pope only presides over such services when a cardinal dies.
The pontiff's appeal for peace came at the end of his Palm Sunday Mass. Over the next week, Benedict will preside over the Good Friday re-enactment of Christ's crucifixion and death and the celebration of Christ's resurrection on Easter Sunday.
At the start of Mass, Benedict blessed palms and olive branches with holy water and then processed through St. Peter's Square, wearing intricate, red- and gold-brocaded vestments and clutching a woven palm frond.
In his homily, Benedict urged the faithful to follow God with the innocence and purity of a child's heart.
"To recognize God, we must abandon the pride that dazzles us, that seeks to push us away from God," he said. To find God, he said, "we must learn to see with a young heart, one which isn't blocked by prejudice and dazzled by interests."
Sunday also marked a lead-up celebration to the Catholic Church's annual World Youth Day, and young people were very much on hand during the open-air service on a blustery spring day. A few hundred carried massive palm fronds at the start of the procession through the square.
Benedict plans to attend World Youth Day itself in Sydney, Australia, in July.
Ahmadinejad Allies Win Largest Share of Votes, Says it Shows Defiance of West
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,338283,00.html
TEHRAN, Iran — Iranian leaders said Sunday their victory in parliamentary elections showed voters' defiance of the West after allies of hard-line President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad won the largest share.
But a powerful bloc of Ahmadinejad's conservative opponents made a strong showing — a split that could mean frictions between the president and former supporters disillusioned by his fiery, populist rule and handling of the economy.
Vote counting was complete everywhere in the country except for the capital, Tehran, showing conservatives who support Iran's clerical leadership maintaining the hold they have had on parliament since 2004.
Iran's Interior Ministry reported turnout in Friday's vote at around 60 percent, up somewhat from 51 percent in 2004. It fell short though of the near 80 percent that turned out in the late 1990s and early 2000s, when a full slate of reformist candidates was allowed to run and was swept into power.
The unelected cleric-led Guardian Council threw out most of the reform movements candidates when it disqualified some 1,700 of them for insufficient loyalty to Islam and Iran's 1979 revolution.
Washington said Iran's leadership had "cooked" the election by barring reformists. The European Union said the vote was "neither fair nor free" because the disqualifications prevented Iranians "from being able to choose freely amongst the full range of political views." It said the barring of reformers was a "clear violation of international norms."
Iran's leaders, however, depicted the increased participation as a show of support of the clerical-led system. Ahmadinejad said the participation "placed a sign of disgrace on the foreheads of our enemies," the state news agency IRNA reported Sunday.
Iran's Supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who had backed pro-Ahmadinejad candidates in the race, thanked Iranians for their participation.
"Your epic and powerful presence overcame the enemy's tricks and turned the enemy's high-profile psychological war aimed at encouraging a low turnout into a vain bubble," he said, according to IRNA.
With 190 of parliament's 290 seats decided, 113 went to conservatives — around 70 to a list dominated by pro-Ahmadinejad hard-liners and the rest to a slate led by his conservative critics, according to individual results announced by state television and the official news agency IRNA. The numbers are not firm because some winners ran on both lists.
Reformists won 31 seats, according to the results. Another 39 winners were independents whose political leanings were not immediately known. Five other seats dedicated to Iran's Jewish, Zoroastrian and Christian minorities have been decided.
Reformist leaders said Sunday that at least 14 winning independents are pro-reform, bringing their bloc to 45 seats so far. If correct, that would be around the size of the reformist presence in the outgoing parliament.
Races for more than 70 seats will go to a run-off vote set for April or May.
The results for Tehran's 30 seats have not yet been announced. Ahmadinejad's allies were heading toward taking at least 14 of the capital's seats, according to partial results, IRNA reported. The remaining seats were likely to head to a second round vote, in which reformists were likely to pick up several seats.
Gun Control Advocates, Opponents Prepare for Supreme Court Argument
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,338282,00.html
WASHINGTON — The nine justices of the highest court in the land will meet Tuesday to hear arguments on who the Founders Fathers intended when they called for the Second Amendment right to keep and bear arms: a well regulated militia or all individuals.
Tuesday's arguments in front of the Supreme Court — the focal point for gun rights advocates and foes alike — will be the first significant Second Amendment case in front of the high court since 1939. Supporters and opponents are equally excited and concerned by the prospect of what the court’s ruling —expected by June — could mean for individuals seeking clearer laws on the right to bear arms.
Washington, D.C., the nation's capital and one party to the case, argues its handgun ban “is a governmental duty of the highest order.” The contrary argument claims the city's law is “draconian” in its infringement of Second Amendment rights, which states, "A well-regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed."
In its pre-argument briefs to the Supreme Court the parties to this case seem to have been writing to convince today’s nine foremost grammarians or historians. Much of the presentations to the Supreme Court focus on the grammatical meaning of the 27-word amendment.
The agitator at the center of this case is Dick Heller, a police officer for the federal government who in his job patrolling federal buildings carries a handgun. But D.C. law prohibits him and nearly every other resident from registering a handgun for personal use.
Heller contends the handgun is necessary to defend himself at his home. The city’s law, on the books for more than three decades and one of the most stringent in the country, was passed to prevent violent and accidental gun violence. It’s a law the city and its supporters say is necessary and successful.
Heller’s lawsuit against the city was initially dismissed but the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals, in a landmark 2-1 decision, overturned that ruling. It declared that the Second Amendment guarantees all individuals the right to keep and bear arms.
That ruling contravened decades of jurisprudence that held the Second Amendment right was exclusive to militias. The D.C. government appealed that ruling and in November the Supreme Court announced it would take the case.
The D.C. government presents three overarching arguments to the Court. First, the city contends the D.C. Circuit erred in its basic interpretation of the law.
“The text and history of the Second Amendment conclusively refute the notion that it entitles individuals to have guns for their own private purposes,” reads the appeal by the city to the high court. Specifically, it points to the language of the Second Amendment and argues both clauses taken individually or in concert can only be read to suggest its application to militias and not individuals.
As for its historical argument, the city concludes, “There is no suggestion that the need to protect private uses of weapons against federal intrusion ever animated the adoption of the Second Amendment.”
The city's attorneys detail the debate that preceded the enactment of the law as part of the Bill of Rights. In so doing, the city draws upon the works of William Blackstone, Alexander Hamilton, James Madison and similarly worded legislation passed in the late 18th century. It argues the Founders’ “efforts surely were purposeful, and should not be ignored two centuries later.”
The city’s second argument is that the Second Amendment does not apply to District-specific legislation. It is a curious argument, at least politically, for a government keen on seeking equal representation in Congress.
“The Framers created a federal enclave to ensure federal protection of federal interests. They could not have intended the Second Amendment to prevent Congress from establishing such gun-control measures as it deemed necessary to protect itself, the president and this court.”
Its final argument rests on an analysis of the D.C. statute which the city says should be done on a “proper reasonableness” standard. The city argues its law “represent(s) the District’s reasoned judgment about how best to meet its duty to protect the public. Because that predictive judgment about how best to reduce gun violence was reasonable and is entitled to substantial deference, it should be upheld.”
In response, attorneys for Heller roundly disagree with the District’s positions with its most fundamental argument being that the lower court was correct in its judgment that the Second Amendment does in fact guarantee an individual the right to keep and bear arms.
They contend the D.C. gun ban is a “draconian infringement” of the Second Amendment. And they too present their grammatical and historical interpretation of the law writing there cannot be “doubts or ambiguities” about the meaning of the second clause or its relationship with the first.
“The words cannot be rendered meaningless by resort to their preamble. Any preamble-based interpretive rationale demanding an advanced degree in linguistics for its explication is especially suspect in this context,” the attorneys argue.
Heller’s lawyers also present its Founders-era evidence by quoting from George Mason, Blackstone and Madison. They also quote lawyer John Adams during his successful defense of British soldiers in the aftermath of the Boston Massacre.
In that trial Adams conceded that “here every private person is authorized to arm himself, and on the strength of this authority, I do not deny the inhabitants had a right to arm themselves at that time for their defense, not for offense."
They also dismiss as spurious the city’s argument that the Second Amendment does not have the effect of law in the District of Columbia. They acknowledge that Congress (and now the D.C. government under Home Rule) has the ability to make gun laws but must do so in accordance with the Constitution. Heller's lawyers draw a parallel with Congress’s power to run the city’s schools which they note cannot then be segregated or otherwise be operated contrary to Constitutional holdings.
Finally, they dismiss the city’s argument that the handgun ban is legal under a “proper reasonableness” standard. Instead they offer a “strict scrutiny” guideline for imposing restrictions on gun ownership.
“As our nation continues to face the scourges of crime and terrorism, no provision of the Bill of Rights would be immune from demands that perceived governmental necessity overwhelm the very standard by which enumerated rights are secured. Exorbitant claims of authority to deny basic constitutional rights are not unknown. Demoting the Second Amendment to some lower tier of enumerate rights is unwarranted. The Second Amendment has the distinction of securing the most fundamental rights of all — enabling the preservation of one’s life and guaranteeing our liberty. These are not second-class concerns.”
It is common for the Supreme Court to ask for the official position of the United States government. In this case, Solicitor General Paul Clement has been given 15 minutes to argue before the court. Lawyers for the District of Columbia and Heller will each have 30 minutes.
His brief, however, surprised many when it argued against a definitive ruling on the merits of the case. Instead the brief counsels the justices that the “better course” would be to remand the case back to the lower courts for further review. In so doing, Clement urges the court to acknowledge the “plain text” of the Second Amendment and recognize that the law does guarantee an individual right to keep and bear arms. He says such an interpretation “reinforces the most natural reading of the amendment’s text.”
Clement asks the court to remand the case out of fear that an outright affirmation of the lower court’s ruling could “cast doubt” on all existing federal firearms legislation.
“The Second Amendment, properly construed, allows for reasonable regulation of firearms.” Within that framework Clement offers to the court what he describes as an intermediate or heightened level of judicial review. He says the court’s handling of legally similar cases by remanding them for further proceedings represent a due diligence that should be followed in this case.
Of the more than 65 friend-of-the-court briefs filed on this case, one drew immediate attention for its dismissal of the solicitor general’s remand argument and because the lead name attached to it is that of Vice President Dick Cheney.
Cheney, in his position as president of the Senate, joined a brief with 55 senators and 250 House members to support Heller asking the court to fully affirm the lower court ruling. It created the most unusual circumstance of the vice president — not to mention majorities of both chambers of Congress — in opposition to the official position of the U.S. government.
“This court should give due deference to the repeated findings over different historical epochs by Congress, a co-equal branch of government, that the amendment guarantees the personal right to possess firearms. ... No purpose would be served by remanding this case for further fact finding or other proceedings.”
The members of Congress who joined the brief are mostly Republicans, including presumptive Republican presidential nominee and Arizona Sen. John McCain. A healthy number of gun-rights Democrats also joined in the brief.
Sens. Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama, both vying for the Democratic presidential nomination, did not make their positions known to the court. Another brief by 17 other House members—all Democrats—and the non-voting delegate to the House from Washington, D.C. asked the court to uphold the city’s handgun ban.
China Confirms Outbreak of Bird Flu
http://www.newsmax.com/health/china_bird_flu/2008/03/16/80781.html
HONG KONG -- Chinese officials have confirmed that bird flu was to blame for killing chickens in poultry markets in the southern Chinese city of Guangzhou, Hong Kong's health bureau Sunday.
China's Ministry of Agriculture notified the administration that the birds tested positive for the H5N1 bird flu virus, marking the country's fifth outbreak among poultry this year, Hong Kong's Food and Health Bureau said in a statement.
The Ministry of Agriculture also said on its Web site that last week's outbreak in Guangzhou killed 114 birds and resulted in the slaughter of 518 others. But it has been contained, the ministry said.
China, which raises more poultry than any other country worldwide, has vowed to aggressively fight the virus. H5N1 has killed at least 235 people worldwide, according to the World Health Organization. Scientists fear it could mutate into a form that spreads easily among humans, potentially sparking a pandemic that kills millions. So far, most human cases have been linked to contact with infected birds.
China has already reported three human bird flu deaths this year, including a 44-year-old migrant worker last month in southern Guangdong province. It has recorded 20 human deaths since the virus began ravaging Asian poultry stocks in late 2003.
RE: OBAMA LIED!--Obama Attended Hate America Sermon
ReplyDeletehttp://newsmax.com/kessler/Obama_hate_America_sermon/2008/03/16/80870.htm
I wondered how long it would take before someone had eye-witness testimony that Obama had full-knowledge of his pastor's hate sermons. This guy has no business being our president if he didn't have the common sense to leave that congregation.
And for those who say that he shouldn't be "accused guilty by association": If you live and sleep with the pigs, then you may as well be one yourself.