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No Tax Money for GA Public School Bible Classes

No Tax Money for GA Public School Bible Classes

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The Georgia State Senate has passed two pieces of legislation that pose a serious threat to the separation of church and state.

One would create state-funded Bible classes in Georgia public schools.
The second would allow the Ten Commandments to be displayed by county governments.

Both bills are on Governor Sonny Perdue’s desk, and he is contemplating whether to sign them.

Take action now and demand that Governor Perdue defend the Constitution and Georgia’s citizens from these attacks on the separation of church and state.

If these were really christians, they would want to post something that better represented Jesus’ teaching. The focus on the ten commandments is symptomatic of their seeming inability to understand love, forgiveness and grace. Neither do they take into account hundreds of years of Jewish and Christian scholarship and debate on issues of interpretation, translation, or socio-historical context. Their “take” on christianity is a perversion of their own religion. Their absolutist views of human beings show little evidence of any of the spiritual virtues. Think I’m overstating? Try Googling “Christian Reconstruction” or “theonomy” – they want a theocracy here, complete with the total control of women, even stoning!

From the Forerunner – I’m not linking to this site – Google a phrase:

We are not looking for a “voice a the table” nor are we seeking “equal time” with the godless promoters of pornography, abortion, safe-sodomy subsidies, socialism, etc. We want them silenced and punished according to God’s Law-Word.

They use God as a tool. Jesus would think they were jerks. This is about votes! This is about scapegoating and turning us against one another so that we don’t notice that we’re all getting robbed. I mean literally robbed – of our traditions, our ideals, our treasury, our natural resources, our futures.

From Apologetics Index:

Epitomizing the Reconstructionist idea of Biblical ”warfare” is the centrality of capital punishment under Biblical Law. Doctrinal leaders (notably Rushdoony, North, and Bahnsen) call for the death penalty for a wide range of crimes in addition to such contemporary capital crimes as rape, kidnapping, and murder. Death is also the punishment for apostasy (abandonment of the faith), heresy, blasphemy, witchcraft, astrology, adultery, ”sodomy or homosexuality,” incest, striking a parent, incorrigible juvenile delinquency, and, in the case of women, ”unchastity before marriage.”

I can’t believe this. Really. I’m shaking my head. So now they want to get ’em while they’re young – and use our own tax dollars to do it! Already they have uniforms. What next, a special salute?

The separation of church and state protects religious rights, the freedom of religious expression. There should be no state sponsorship of a specific religious tradition. Religious training of minors is the right and responsibility of families and their own religious tradition.

There is no proposal here to teach a wide range of religious texts or religious themes across the world’s traditions. The cuts to more fundamental educational areas serve only to highlight the political motivation of these bills.

Bible classes for minors are an unconstitutional use of funds. At the college level, courses related to religion, such as comparative religion and mythology, spiritual autobiography, Bible as literature, and the like are appropriate as elective courses at state universities. I have been trained in theology and ethics at a state university, and taken courses in religion at the undergraduate level at another. But courses and departments of religion have a different set of approaches than the ones we can expect to see from public school teachers. They started with home schooling, now this. Questions of belief will enter the classroom, and we will see a newly indocrinated “Christian Youth” if they get their way. Wake up, sheeple.

No – you can’t use our tax dollars to indoctrinate our children. No – you can’t fool us, we know what this is all about, and we’re not all as ignorant as you seem to think. Add these totalitarian “religious” power freaks to the neo-cons of empire and the puppets of corporate interests, and you see the unholy trinity that is killing this country and all it stands for! Those who have eyes to see and ears to hear, take heed!

Stop the pseudo-religious right from pushing their dubious “theology” in our public schools and our public square.

Dear Mr. President

Dear Mr. President

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Pink‘s new song “Dear Mr. President” features backup vocals from Indigo Girls. We need more and more songs like this.

Dear Mr. President
Come take a walk with me
Let’s pretend we’re just two people and
You’re not better than me
I’d like to ask you some questions if we can speak honestly

What do you feel when you see all the homeless on the street
Who do you pray for at night before you go to sleep
What do you feel when you look in the mirror
Are you proud

How do you sleep while the rest of us cry
How do you dream when a mother has no chance to say goodbye
How do you walk with your head held high
Can you even look me in the eye
And tell me why

Dear Mr. President
Were you a lonely boy
Are you a lonely boy
Are you a lonely boy
How can you say
No child is left behind
We’re not dumb and we’re not blind
They’re all sitting in your cells
While you pay the road to hell

What kind of father would take his own daughter’s rights away
And what kind of father might hate his own daughter if she were gay
I can only imagine what the first lady has to say
You’ve come a long way from whiskey and cocaine

How do you sleep while the rest of us cry
How do you dream when a mother has no chance to say goodbye
How do you walk with your head held high
Can you even look me in the eye

Let me tell you bout hard work
Minimum wage with a baby on the way
Let me tell you bout hard work
Rebuilding your house after the bombs took them away
Let me tell you bout hard work
Building a bed out of a cardboard box
Let me tell you bout hard work
Hard work
Hard work
You don’t know nothing bout hard work
Hard work
Hard work
Oh

How do you sleep at night
How do you walk with your head held high
Dear Mr. President
You’d never take a walk with me
Would you

Take Action – Protect Health

Take Action – Protect Health

New Air Pollution Rules Threaten Public Health

Take action now

Disregarding and misrepresenting recommendations from their own scientists, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) recently proposed new air pollution standards that do not sufficiently protect public health. The new rules apply to particulate matter pollution, sources of which include agricultural activity, vehicle exhaust, and emissions from coal-fired power plants. Over 2,000 recent studies have linked particulate matter exposure to heart disease, respiratory ailments, and premature death. The EPA needs to hear from you today. We have until April 17 to urge the EPA to listen to their scientists and create standards that will adequately protect our health and the health of our children.

Take action now

Stop Forced Relocation Black Mesa AZ

Stop Forced Relocation Black Mesa AZ

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Oppose Senate Bill S.1003

Native people’s lives and livelihoods are on the line! Traditional Navajo (known in their language as Dineh) would be forcibly evicted and dispossessed of their homes under this bill. I support the right of these families, who are among the few remaining American Indians who still speak their traditional language and practice their traditional culture, to remain on their lands and strongly oppose Senate Bill 1003.

The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) “estimates that enacting S. 1003 would have no significant effect on direct spending or revenues.” In fact, the original Navajo Hopi Land Settlement Act of 1974 forced 1000s of hardworking self-sustaining families into welfare dependency, despair and early death. This ill-conceived bill may actual force hardworking independent people into welfare dependency on the federal government and increase the cost to US taxpayers.The cost overruns and inadequate financing of the relocation program are not the fault of the Navajo and are entirely due to major miscalculations on the number of affected people and federal governmental incompetence. Adding insult to injury, the lands designated for relocation are contaminated by one of the worst uranium mine accidents in US history.

A Washington Post investigative article has uncovered massive fraud and collusion involving Peabody Coal company and a consortium of 23 Utility companies in the passage of the original relocation law, P.L. 93-531 that led to the forced relocation of over 15,000 Navajo in what experts call one of the “worst involuntary resettlements” worldwide in the modern era. To remove the remaining people based on amendments to this corrupt and fraudulent law is nothing less than environmental ethnic cleansing.

The Navajo tell us that it is no coincidence that the land from which the Navajo are being removed contains over $ 20 billion worth of coal. Jack Abramoff and his associates have been involved in lobbying for companies interested in the Navajo’s land and we support the request of the Navajo families for an investigation into any activities regarding Jack Abramoff and Senate Bill 1003. This bill comes at a time while Peabody Energy is in the process of acquiring a life-of-mine lease in the Black Mesa area even though the Black Mesa Mine is temporarily shut down.

Therefore, we support the Navajo families in opposing Senate Bill 1003 and respectfully request

  • That the Senate remove Senate Bill 1003 from consideration
  • That the Congress pass a resolution opposing forced relocation of Native Americans
  • That Congress help the communities already relocated rather than closing any federal offices that may be able to help them
  • That Congress work directly with affected families and communities to resolve any land issues and listen to them, not just Jack Abramoff or other high paid lobbyists.

More background

Send your letter today!

$100 ticket for Bushit Bumper Sticker

$100 ticket for Bushit Bumper Sticker

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An oncology nurse from Emory University Hospital here in DeKalb Country Georgia got a $100 Ticket for a bumpersticker that was described as “lewd.” The officer gave her a talk about patriotism, too.

All is said was

“NO MORE BUSHIT”

That’s just ridiculous. I have seen much worse than that!

Clearly she was pulled over and issued a ticket because of her politics. Not allowed.

She was even wearing her nurse’s uniform when she was pulled over.

Elaborating to The Progressive, Grier says people are wrong to view this in a partisan way.

“It’s not just a Democrat/Republican issue,” she says. “Y’all need to get beyond that. It’s my right to speak, and yours.”

Gerry Weber, the legal director of the ACLU of Georgia, is representing Grier. “The indicators are that the officer didn’t like her views of President Bush and that was the motivating factor,” he says.

Weber says the ticketing was clearly illegal.

He says the Georgia Supreme Court struck down the “lewd bumpersticker” statute way back in 1991, in a case involving a defendant who had a “Shit Happens” bumpersticker.