Update [2006-1-25 12:47:7 by GeneG]: Intelligent Design as a scientific theory is an impossibility. Science requires any theory to be subject to one rule: it must be falsifiable, in other words to be science a theory may be wrong.  Intelligent Design, with its reliance on magic, miracles and supernatural intervention cannot be proven false. Reliance on God to fill the gaps in material knowledge is NOT science, it is metaphysical philosophy. If this subject must be taught in our public schools, teach it as philosophy, or teach it in the humanities along with other mythologies that ascribe creation to the divine.

I came across a disturbing piece by Dinah Kpodo in the Ghanaian paper Public Agenda, published on January 20. It gives a ground's-eye view of how damaging the United States' dogmatic promotion of abstinence-only programs can be to girls and women.

Here is great article by one of my favorite columnists, Sister Joan Chittister.

Scalia is not the "states rights" form of conservative that some people market him as being.

As can be shown from his opinion in Gonzales vs. Oregon, his willingness to overturn Oregon's "Death with Dignity" law, he sees the federal government as having the power to force a single moral code across the whole country -- and that moral code is the religious code he adheres to.

I was never excited about attending Sunday school; the experience seemed like an infringement on my time.  That time, I felt, could be better spent not having to listen to some grown-up go on about how God loves us.  On top of the Sunday school classroom setting, which felt like more school on my day off, having to attend another hour of worship (more preaching on how God loves me) was simply too much to ask.  The battles with my mother over attendance were endless and often I'd win, no church service just Sunday school.  My parents were a split marriage on religion; dad a Roman Catholic and mom a Southern Baptist.  Mom won the battle for my brother and my spiritual education, since dad traveled and mom felt she should not have to us take us to a church where she was not a member.  Actually, Catholic service scared the crap out of me.  I couldn't understand all the robes and brass standards, smoke and chants in a language I didn't speak.  The entire service felt like a bazaar initiation ceremony that I was afraid might involve me in some fashion I couldn't begin to comprehend.  It felt like a foreign country was invading my neighborhood, unseen except by the chosen that walked through the church doors.  Meanwhile, back at Baptist central, it is to the credit of one woman who taught Sunday school in those days that the seed of racial equality was sown at an early age.  I still remember to this day her explaining how color was just a variety in our skin and that all people were equal.  Not a particular astonishing thought but it was the first time I had come across this idea and it lodged itself in my brain, even though I played the denial card to keep peace with those around me.  This personal epiphany was during Eisenhower's administration and much of the struggle for racial equality in America still lay ahead.  I remember, also, one Sunday school teacher taking it upon himself to teach us boys the reproductive facts of life.  To this day I felt he was bold and courageous to stick his neck out on a subject that most parents ignored.   He knew he was going beyond the usual scope of Sunday school lessons and so did we but I admired his concern that we needed to know this.  

I actually saw the following in a response to a recent Raw Story article (on a leaked Justice Department memo in regards to the ongoing scandal about how the NSA may have illegally spied on US nationals with the President's consent and used warantless wiretaps--reportedly, the Justice Department will be defending the President) and, well...it's piqued my interest, to put it mildly.

Namely--at least according to this blogger--it may theoretically be consitutionally possible to have impeachment proceedings begin without the House Judiciary Committee voting for it, specifically, by a state government calling for impeachment.

This may possibly (depending on state constitutions) also be a strategy for dominionists in state governments.  I'm still taking some of this with a grain of salt, mind, but I'm not finding any fatal flaws so far.

I am a lesbian, feminist, single mother whose spirituality is closer to New Age and Buddhism than Christianity. This spring I battled the constitutional amendment banning same-sex marriage and civil unions in Kansas. Imagine my surprise when I realized how much I have in common with fundamentalists.

We don't subscribe to the same theology or the same politics. We might scream at each other if forced into the same room for more than five minutes. However, we do share one important thing: We both sense a hole in our culture.

Randall Tobias, a former pharmaceutical company CEO who has been running Bush's global AIDS initiative since 2003, will soon become the new head of USAID, and Condoleeza Rice will be giving the post far more juice than it's ever had before. The move has sent off alarms among women's health and AIDS advocates who've watched Tobias become an avid promoter of ineffective--and thus deadly--abstinence-only initiatives.

The best way to fight the Religious Right is not simply to go head to head with their religious spokesmen, but to take on the real source of their power---their neoconservative allies and benfeactors.

Living as i do in the mountains 100 miles north of Spokane, i periodically travel south for Peace demonstrations.  So i was looking forward to spending the day at an event planned in River Park Square for MLK's birthday.  My friend was going to table for Planned Parenthood there and i caught a ride with her before festivities began.

Washington Post, January 17, 2006; 12:45 PM

The Supreme Court delivered a rebuff to the Bush administration over physician-assisted suicide today, rejecting a Justice Department effort to bar doctors in Oregon from helping terminally ill patients end their lives under a 1994 state law.

In a 6-3 vote, the court ruled that then-U.S. Attorney General John D. Ashcroft overstepped his authority in 2001 by trying to use a federal drug law to prosecute doctors who prescribed lethal overdoses under the Oregon Death With Dignity Act, the only law in the nation that allows physician-assisted suicide. The measure has been approved twice by Oregon voters and upheld by lower court rulings.

The Christian Coalition announced its legislative goals for 2006.