As a former attorney, Fox News's Megyn Kelly should know full well what defamation is, and she should know full well that what she repeatedly said on last Thursday's episode of her show The Kelly File was indeed defamation.
Who is it that Ms. Kelly defamed? Mikey Weinstein, the founder and president of the Military Religious Freedom Foundation (MRFF). And what did she say that was defamatory? Well, she repeatedly said that Mikey is an atheist and that MRFF is an atheist organization.
In a six-minute segment about MRFF's demand that, due to the numerous military regulations prohibiting such activities (see my previous post), the Department of Defense cancel the planned participation of uniformed military personnel in Shirley Dobson's big upcoming National Day of Prayer shindig, Ms. Kelly verbally repeated her utterly false claim no less than three times, had the same false claim appear on the screen three times, and then repeated it again in the headline for the story on her show's website.
Ray Moore, best known for his efforts to get Southern Baptists to take their children out of the public schools, is running for the Republican nomination for Lt. Governor of South Carolina. The field comprises Charleston real estate developer Pat McKinney, former Attorney General Henry McMaster and Mike Campbell, son of former Gov. Carroll Campbell. The primary is June 10th.
Moore's platform is consistent with his history. He would abolish what he considers the "pagan" and "godless" public schools and return to 18th century notions of private Christian schools and home schools, which he sees as the "original American model" and the "Biblical model." His campaign slogan is "What once was can be again."
(Fox News host Sean Hannity is in the news due to the backfiring of his shameless promotion of rightist thug Cliven Bundy and his militia backers. Hannity, like so many others, is busy trying to distance themselves from Bundy in light of some particularly vile, racist remarks. This seems like a good moment to recall that Hannity has made a career of promoting figures of the far right. This post was originally published in February of 2013. -- FC)
We are pleased to welcome WB Reeves as a guest front pager. He is a founder of the Neighbors Network, which for seven years in the 1990s investigated and published reports on hate groups operating in the Atlanta area. Some of their reports are now available online, notably a report (PDF) on Christian Reconstructionist Gary DeMar and his colleagues at American Vision. And the Woodruff Library at Emory University has announced the opening of the Neighbors Network archive containing the documentation of of their research and activism. -- FC
Back in the early 90's, before his apotheosis as a Fox News superstar, Hannity was a second string Right Wing shock jock toiling in the Atlanta market. In the run up to the ill fated Atlanta Olympics, our paths crossed.
Kyle Mantyla at Right Wing Watch reports that "On today's radio broadcast, Glenn Beck went full David Barton, claiming that one-third of the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence came straight out of the Bible; more specifically, right out of the Book of Deuteronomy." He also wrote this claim is "pure Barton bunk, as Chris Rodda explained back when Barton made this claim on Beck's program in 2010." Below is a reprise of Rodda's post of July 7, 2010. -- FC
This installment of my series debunking the American history lies told on Glenn Beck is about a study published in 1984 in The American Political Science Review, and how that study is misrepresented to make it appear that our founding documents were based on the Bible, especially the Book of Deuteronomy.
(Note: This is part four of an ongoing video series. I would normally provide links to the previous installments, but Vimeo has removed my videos, citing copyright issues, although these videos were well within the limits of "fair use.")
UPDATE: The issue with Vimeo has been resolved. They promptly reviewed my videos and have restored the ones that were removed. I will be updating everything and adding links to the previous installments as soon as possible.
This is the latest in an anthology of Talk to Action posts examining Neo-Confederates and exposing their sometimes theocratic agendas.
Four Democratic candidates have filed papers with Maryland's Anne Arundel County Board of Elections, to campaign and raise contributions jointly as the Democrats for 33 slate, and to call out their Neo-Confederate opponent who is running as a Democrat.
In the course of his long career Pastor John Hagee has been chasing the end of times, beating a muscular pro-Israeli drum, establishing the world's largest pro-Israel organization, and accumulating extraordinary wealth. Now, with Blood Moons rising, his End Times war chest is bubbling over.
Before your head explodes at the thought of yet another story about an End Times-inflamed preacher, consider this. Not only does Pastor Hagee preside over the mega-church, Cornerstone Church in San Antonio, but he also heads a multi-million-dollar media empire. Not only is he a powerful political player within the Republican Party, but he has established significant political connections in Israel. The faithful have lapped up many of the more than 30 books he has written, including: "Earth's Final Moments," "From Daniel to Doomsday: The Countdown Has Begun," "Can America Survive?: 10 Prophetic Signs That We Are The Terminal Generation" and "Jerusalem Countdown," which was made into a not-very-well-received movie. I think you get the general themes of Hagee's oeuvre!
Perhaps his most significant accomplishment, however, came in 2006, when Hagee founded what is now the largest pro-Israel religious-based lobbying group in the world, the 1.3 million member Christians United for Israel (CUFI).
Everyone has probably experienced a Honey Maid graham cracker sometime in their lifetime. Last month, Nabisco, the company that makes Honey Maid Graham Crackers, as well as Oreos, Chips Ahoy, Nilla Wafers and an assortment of other well-known cookies and crackers, came up with an extraordinary family-positive/gay-positive advertisement. And "traditional values" conservatives went, well ... crackers.
Ironically, at the end of the day, the graham cracker dust-up may in fact benefit both the folks at Nabisco, and its chief critics, the American Family Association's One Million Moms.
(I am also once again giving away a free PDF version of one of my books, just like I did last year to mark this anniversary, so be sure to scroll down to the end of this post to get this year's freebie!)
If you don't think religion-themed films are trending, consider this: As of this past weekend, Noah, now in it's second week in theaters, has brought in more than $72 million at the box office; God's Not Dead, more than $32 million in three weeks, and Son of God, more than $58 million in its sixth week in theaters.
Tim LaHaye and Jerry Jenkins are no dummies. And neither is Paul Lalonde. They understand that the first attempts at turning LaHaye and Jenkins' mega-best-selling Left Behind series of apocalyptic novels into a film franchise fell flat. Although three Left Behind films were made, there was little interest -- except amongst the most enthusiastic End Timers -- little buzz generated within the filmmaking community, and not much doing at the box office.
Now, in the spirit of "pick yourself up, dust yourself off, and start all over again," LaHaye, Jenkins and Lalonde have garnered a multi-million dollar budget, and plucked a box-office legend for the lead role, and are poised to take full advantage of the latest flood of religion-themed films.
There are days when fundamentalist zealots do something so off the wall that I don't know whether to laugh or cry, so I do a little bit of both.
Today is one of those days. This emotional roller-coaster comes courtesy of a band of extremists who have fine-tuned creationism and have concluded - wait for it - that Copernicus and Galileo were wrong: The Earth really is the center of the universe.
Mike Huckabee mailed out an open invitation to all Texas pastors inviting them to attend the Texas Renewal Project. The first 1,000 to respond got free hotel accommodations plus breakfast and two banquet meals. Wives were welcome to come along with no charge. Mike's invite noted our Christian heritage is under attack by a "force more destructive than any other threat America has faced in decades."
Fr. C.J. ("John") McCloskey is in many ways the American face of the secretive Catholic organization, Opus Dei. He is a former Wall Streeter, who is well-connected on the Catholic Right and among the political and media elite of Washington, DC. There, he fosters his message of traditional Catholicism and supply-side economics framed with a reactionary view of the American people as being either "Bible Christians and faithful Catholics" or a "...culture of death."
McCloskey recently raised the stakes of his geo-political vision in an essay in which he considers secession in response to and the continuation of Roe vs. Wade as the law of the land, which he sees as epitomizing the "tyrannical regime" that is the government of the United States.
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