President Obama is using gay rights as a political sledgehammer to destroy “the actual foundation of our country,” suggests Family Research Council President Tony Perkins in a fundraising letter arriving this week--and it's all part of a Satanic plot!

“By promoting same-sex ‘marriage,’ President Obama is taking a sledgehammer to the bedrock institution of a free society,” warns Perkins in the letter mailed after his group's recent Values Voter Summit in Washington, DC. “If this assault is not stopped, America’s future is in grave peril” writes Perkins who asks for donations “to sustain our efforts in defense of natural marriage.” That defense is needed because, according to Perkins, “If President Obama and the powerful homosexual activist groups he is aligned with get their way, it will be disastrous for America.”

In July 2005, the Zionist Organization of America (ZOA) (http://www.zoa.org/) presented Pat Robertson with its State of Israel Friendship Award at their "Salute to Israel" dinner. "We wouldn't do it," Abraham Foxman, the national director of the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), told the New York City-based newspaper, The Forward. "He's not deserving, but I have no objections to other groups honoring him."

In May 2008, after it was revealed -- at this website -- that Pastor John Hagee had delivered a sermon stating that God sent Hitler to hunt the Jews and chase them to Israel, the ZOA issued a press release in defense of Hagge, calling him "a staunch friend and supporter of the State of Israel, of Zionism, and of the Jewish people" (http://4international.wordpress.com/2008/06/13/zoa-is-right-to-de fend-hagee/).

Now, three-plus years later, on Sunday, November 20, one of the two featured speakers at the ZOA's 114th Anniversary Louis D. Brandeis Award Dinner will be Glenn Beck.

And the ZOA has chutzpah enough to lecture the Occupy Wall Street movement about anti-Semitism.

An October 2011 poll shows former Hawaii Republican Governor Linda Lingle, now in the 2012 race for one of Hawaii's two US senate seats, closely trailing her two likely Democratic Party opponents. As the race heats up a 2010 incident may become an issue; on July 6th, 2010, as heavily documented by Hawaii activist and radio show host Carroll Cox (and covered on Cox' Hawaii AM radio show), then-governor Lingle allowed religious activists, opposed to a bill to legalize civil unions for same-sex couples, to stage a non-permitted rally outside her office in the Hawaii State House. As I quoted Cox, in an August 25, 2010 story titled Hawaii Governor Linda Lingle Informs Gay Rights Activists They're Second-Class Citizens,

"Why is it that the people who came to the Capitol building in support of the gay community and HB444 were required to obtain a Special Use Permit and proof of liability insurance in order to participate in a rally, but the pastors, church members, and those rallying against the civil rights legislation were not similarly required to obtain the necessary permits? And, why is it that certain people were invited to a special prayer meeting inside the Governor's office, but others were excluded?" - Hawaii activist Carroll Cox"

[ed - for document Chris Rodda discusses here, see: http://www.netsafa.navy.mil/ipg/American_Life.htm]

Anyone familiar with my writing knows that I primarily do two things -- I work for the Military Religious Freedom Foundation (MRFF) and I debunk the myths and lies about American history used by Christian nationalist writers, politicians, and media personalities. While these are two separate things that I do, they sometimes overlap. Every year around the 4th of July and other patriotic holidays a slew of articles appear in military newspapers proclaiming America a Christian nation and using the same historical lies I debunk in my other work; Christian nationalist speakers like David Barton appear on military bases; politicians seeking to pass theocratic legislation use a completely inaccurate history of the military chaplaincy to assert that the U.S. military has always been Christian. In fact, it was a David Barton essay about the "myth" of separation of church and state in the high school JROTC core curriculum American history textbook, and the article I wrote about that back in 2007, that led to me working for MRFF in the first place.

In spite of these overlaps, I've been kind of silent up until now on the subject of the rampant use of historical revisionism in the military, squirreling away the many, many examples of it that I've collected in a folder on my computer, with plans to eventually write something about it. There's something I recently became aware of, however, that I can't just put away in a folder. It's just too crazy.

In Quentin Tarantino's film "Pulp Fiction," Harvey Keitel plays Winston Wolf, an underworld problem solver. When two hit men, Vincent Vega (John Travolta) and Jules Winfield (Samuel L. Jackson) accidentally shoot their informant Marvin in the face while driving, "The Wolf" is called in take charge of the situation. Under "The Wolf's" direction, the car is meticulously cleaned, the body is hidden in the trunk, and their bloody clothes are disposed of. "The Wolf" has taken care of everything in a timely manner.

While there's no murder scene to be cleansed, Texas Governor Rick Perry's campaign is shot full of holes. His poll numbers are down, his debate performances have been wretched, his credibility is shot, and his re-birthing of the birther card displayed continued poor judgment. His newly unveiled economic plan is a Forbesian rehash. For Team Perry, his billionaire backers and chums on the religious right, it's time to call in the big guns.

And that's where Joe Allbaugh, who, according to Karen Hughes' book Ten Minutes from Normal dubbed the Texas Bush team of Karl Rove, himself, and Karen Hughes, "the brain, the brawn and the bite," comes in.

The Pennsylvania Senate Education Committee passed a school voucher bill that could go to the state Senate for a vote as early as today. Beginning in April of this year, I wrote a series of articles about the use of school vouchers as a strategy for dismantling public education, and the role of the Betsy DeVos-led organization American Federation for Children in this well-funded political effort.  Talk2action co-founder Bruce Wilson and I produced a video documenting the teaching of creationism and attacks on Catholicism in the textbook series used by private schools already receiving corporate tax credit funding (EITC) in Pennsylvania.  If the controversial SB-1 passes, the public funding to private and parochial schools, including those in the video, will be dramatically increased. SB-1 would initiate a voucher program and expand EITC from $75 million to $125 million over the next three years.

On August 5th, 2011, one day before Rick Perry's August 6th The Response prayer event, MSNBC's Lawrence O'Donnell challenged Texas Governor Perry's decision to include, as a speaker at the event, Christians United For Israel founder and head John Hagee - because of comments from Hagee that many have taken to be anti-Semitic and anti-Catholic. O'Donnell vowed that if Perry chose to run for president in the 2012 election, he would make sure Hagee's controversial statements stuck to Perry. O'Donnell's August 5th segment featured video footage (identified as being from "Talk To Action"), of Hagee's now infamous 'God sent Hitler' claim ("Then God sent a hunter. Hitler was a hunter.") According to O'Donnell, Hagee and his partisans sent letters to MSNBC protesting O'Donnell's coverage of Hagee. In response, Lawrence O'Donnell has made an open invitation for John Hagee, or his representative, to appear on O'Donnell's "Last Word" show to explain or clarify Hagee's controversial statements. John Hagee has so far refused (see embedded video, in full story, for Lawrence O'Donnell's August 5th, 2011 segment showcasing Hagee's statements.)

During an Occupy LA protest, Patricia McAllister, a substitute teacher with the Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD), told Reason TV that "the Zionist Jews who are running these big banks and our federal reserve -- which is not run by the federal government -- they need to be run out of this country." In a later interview with Fox11, she said "Jews have been run out of 109 countries throughout history, and we need to run them out of this one."

Whatever else she may be, McAllister, who was not a speaker at the rally and who was subsequently fired by the District for her comments, has become the poster child for the right; proof positive that the Occupy Movement is brimming with anti-Semites.

Are there a significant number of participants in the Occupy Movement engaged in anti-Semitic behavior? Where is the anti-Semitism coming from? How does a "leaderless" movement deal with its outliers?

What responsibility, if any, do politicians who aspire to the presidency of the United States bear for the views of religious leaders they choose to appear onstage with at nationally broadcast public events?

It may turn out that a non-profit agency funded by conservative Christian Silicon Valley money men called United in Purpose may be the most important Religious Right entity in the 2012 election cycle.    

Here is a primer on what we've learned so far.  

Last month I wrote a piece for BuzzFlash (which was re-posted here)  called "The Not So Stealth Campaign to Silence Critics of Religious Extremism" (http://blog.buzzflash.com/node/13036). The essence of the piece was to call attention to a column in USA Today by Mark Pinsky attacking researchers, writers, reporters and critics of two trending developments on the Christian right, Dominionism and the New Apostolic Reformation.

The liberal Pinsky -- as several conservative writers had done previously -- asserted that the NAR and other Dominionists were neither broad-based movements embraced by the evangelical community, nor, as some on the left were claiming - a particular political threat. In developing his argument, Pinsky not only demeaned NAR critics, but he made the bizarre assertion that Pastor John Hagee and conservative Christian historian David Barton were marginal figures on the conservative evangelical landscape.

Now, leaders of the New Apostolic Reformation have targeted this website, where some of the most incisive reporting on the NAR has been published.

My article on TheCall Detroit has been published at Dome Magazine, a Michigan politics and policy journal.  Rick Perry's Houston prayer event on August 6 was orchestrated by leadership of TheCall and the International House of Prayer (IHOP) ministries that share a campus in Kansas City, Missouri.  Their next large venue event is in Detroit on 11/11/11 and has been marketed throughout the year as an effort to bring black and white evangelicals together in what the organizers describe as a massive spiritual warfare effort against freemasonry and Islam.