Wednesday, September 30, 2015
Borowitz Report: Pope Met with People Who Refuse to Do Jobs. Sorry He Couldn't Meet Them All
Kim Davis: Anything Wrong With This Picture?
http://paxonbothhouses.blogspot.com/2015/09/kim-davis-anything-wrong-with-this.html
Alan: When asked how many people work in the Vatican, Pope John XXIII answered: "About half."
http://paxonbothhouses.blogspot.com/2015/09/kim-davis-anything-wrong-with-this.html
Alan: When asked how many people work in the Vatican, Pope John XXIII answered: "About half."
The Pope met privately with the Kentucky county clerk Kim Davis, and also met at the U.S. Capitol with several hundred other people who have chosen not to perform their duties, the Vatican said.
“Reporting every day to a job that one has no intention of doing can only fill one with anguish,” the official Vatican statement read. “The Pope wanted to show these people compassion.”
While in Washington, the Pope had hoped to meet with thousands of additional people who do not do their jobs, but there “wasn’t enough time,” the Vatican said.
Most Christians Hold The Law In Contempt
Disobedience is like jumping off Everest to prove the law of gravity can be ignored.
Repercussions exist.
We are free get with the program... or not.
Yeshua Excoriates Fellow Pharisees: "The Woe Passages"
"Love Your Enemies. Do Good To Those Who Hate You," Luke 6: 27-42
"Do You Know What You're Doing To Me?"
Jesus of Nazareth
http://paxonbothhouses.
"Pope Francis Links"
The Bush Administration And Torture
The lesser angels of our nature.
Christianity's Bedrock Commitment To Torture: Remaking "The Faithful" In God's Image
"Good Romans" Considered Jesus' Torture Necessary For Imperial Safety
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"Good Romans" Considered Jesus' Torture Necessary For Imperial Safety
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Americans, Especially Catholics, Approve Of Inquisitorial Torture
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"The Catholic Voice In The Torture Debate," John A. Coleman S.J.
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On Balance, Torture Is Massively Counter-Productive And Self-Destructive
http://paxonbothhouses.
Pope Benedict XVI's Question: 'Can Modern Warfare Ever Be Just?'
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Why Torture Doesn't Work
Torture: The CIA's First Detainee Spent 266 Days In A Box The Size Of A Coffin
George Will: "The Torture Of Solitary Confinement"
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Bush's Torture Team: Legal Counselor John Yoo Justifies Crushing Children's Testicles
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Conservative Psychopathology: A Clinician's Guide
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Bush's Torture Team: Legal Counselor John Yoo Justifies Crushing Children's Testicles
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Conservative Psychopathology: A Clinician's Guide
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"The Catholic Voice In The Torture Debate," John A. Coleman S.J.
"The Christian Paradox: How A Faithful Nations Gets Jesus Wrong"
Bill McKibben
"The Catholic Voice In The Torture Debate," John A. Coleman S.J.
Bill McKibben
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The Last Time Christians Had Balls They Believed In Martyrdom
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"The Rapture" And The Enforcement Of Happiness
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Bin Laden's Stated Goal: To Bankrupt The United States
(He knows he cannot take us out. But with Uncle Sam's spendthrift help, he can make us collapse)
http://paxonbothhouses.
http://paxonbothhouses.
The Last Time Christians Had Balls They Believed In Martyrdom
http://paxonbothhouses.
"The Rapture" And The Enforcement Of Happiness
http://paxonbothhouses.
Bin Laden's Stated Goal: To Bankrupt The United States
(He knows he cannot take us out. But with Uncle Sam's spendthrift help, he can make us collapse)
http://paxonbothhouses.
The Last Time Christians Had Balls They Believed In Martyrdom
http://paxonbothhouses.
"The Rapture" And The Enforcement Of Happiness
http://paxonbothhouses.
Bin Laden's Stated Goal: To Bankrupt The United States
(He knows he cannot take us out. But with Uncle Sam's spendthrift help, he can make us collapse)
http://paxonbothhouses.
"The Torture-Free True Story Of The Best USMC Interrogator In WWII"
http://paxonbothhouses.
"The Torture-Free True Story Of The Best USMC Interrogator In WWII"
http://paxonbothhouses.
http://paxonbothhouses.
CIA Torture Report: Best Pax Posts
CIA Torture Report: Best Pax Posts
Give Conservatives The Small Stuff In Exchange For Single Payer Healthcare
(Single Payer - or some government supervised system much like it - is the only way to make enough healthcare cost cuts to prevent "the bank" from breaking.)
Federal Reserve Bank Investigator Carmen Segarra Fired For Holding Banks Responsible
On Balance, Torture Is Massively Counter-Productive And Self-Destructive
Dick Cheney On Torturing Prisoners: "I'd Do It Again In A Minute"
Federal Reserve Bank Investigator Carmen Segarra Fired For Holding Banks Responsible
On Balance, Torture Is Massively Counter-Productive And Self-Destructive
Dick Cheney On Torturing Prisoners: "I'd Do It Again In A Minute"
On Balance, Torture Is Massively Counter-Productive And Self-Destructive
Dick Cheney On Torturing Prisoners: "I'd Do It Again In A Minute"
Miguel de Unamuno
"Lucifer was an angel too."
"My Client, A Torture Victim"
Even If Torture Doesn't Work In The Real World, TV Convinces Us It Does
The Ethics Of Torture Explored In E.M.Coetzee's Painful Novel
Black Hawk Down Author: "Torture Has Yielded Few Intelligence Gains"
http://paxonbothhouses.
Better Than Torture
Torture Doesn't Work. Here's What Does
"CIA Torture Report A Travesty," Charles Krauthammer
"Lucifer was an angel too."
Better Than Torture
The Torture-Free True Story Of The Best USMC Interrogator In WWII
The CIA Torture Report Presents A Real Challenge To American Exceptionalism
Torture Is Who We Are: A Country, Like A Person, Is What It Does
The Only CIA Officer In Prison For The Torture Program...
The United States Tortures War Prisoners. Why The CIA Destroyed 92 Torture Videos
CIA Torture Report: Best Pax Posts
CIA Torture Report: Best Pax Posts
The CIA Torture Manual Was Written By A Pair Of Charlatans
CIA Director, Michael Hayden, Insists On Due Process.... For Himself!
"Is The United States Still A Nation Of Law?
Bad Cops And Bad Politicians Walk"
The CIA Torture Manual Was Written By A Pair Of Charlatans
CIA Director, Michael Hayden, Insists On Due Process.... For Himself!
"Is The United States Still A Nation Of Law?
Bad Cops And Bad Politicians Walk"
Bad Cops And Bad Politicians Walk"
The Religious Right Has No Idea What to Do Now
The Religious Right Has No Idea What to Do Now
The Values Voter Summit revealed a movement in disarray after the Supreme Court’s same-sex marriage ruling
By Suzy Khimm @suzykhimm
It’s been a rough stretch lately for Christian social conservatives, whose nightmare came to life this past summer with the Supreme Court’s ruling on same-sex marriage in Obergefell vs. Hodges. But the annual Values Voter Summit kicked off this past weekend in Washington with shouts of jubilation, as activists celebrated the unexpected news that House Speaker John Boehner would be resigningamid the fight over social conservatives’ effort to defund Planned Parenthood or force a government shutdown. “Yes!” one man shouted above the deafening cheers and applause on Friday morning after Senator Marco Rubio interrupted his address to announce Boehner’s exit from the podium. “Amen!” shouted another.
Later, on Friday evening, another packed room at the Omni Shoreham would erupt once again when Kim Davis, the defiant country clerk from Kentucky, took the stage to accept an award for refusing to issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples. “I am only one,” Davis told the crowd in her brief remarks, her voice rising to a shout. “But we are many!”
It was a pent-up primal scream that these Christian culture-warriors have long been waiting to unleash. While these triumphal moments may have been fleeting—Boehner almost surely won’t be replaced as speaker by a hardcore social conservative, and Davis’s stand has done nothing concrete to advance the cause of religious liberties—the urge to cheer forsomething was easy to understand; right about now, evangelicals will take whatever victories they can get. Ever since the religious right’s political power arguably peaked in 2004, when President George W. Bush and Karl Rove made gay-marriage bans a centerpiece of their re-election strategy, social conservatives have watched helplessly as their “family values” agenda fizzled, as the tide increasingly swam against them on gay marriage, and as Tea Partiers replaced them as the most coveted constituency for Republican candidates to court. While they've had great success in enacting abortion restrictions in many states, they’ve seen popular support for much of their once-ambitious policy agenda erode.
Despite the hallelujahs, what this year’s summit ended up highlighting was not the resurgent power of Christian conservatives in the Republican Party, but how much their influence on the policy debate has diminished outside of the issue of abortion. As usual, most of the major GOP presidential contenders—even the unlikely figure of Donald Trump—came courting thecrowd of 2,700 who'd registered for the event. But they offered little besides effusive praise for Kim Davis and utterly vague—if not utterly unrealistic—promises to champion religious liberties in the White House. When the summit-goers left Washington to scatter back to their hometowns across America, they left with no clear idea of what to fight for next on gay marriage—or how.
The very fact that religious liberty was this year’s marquee issue at Values Voters was itself a sign that social conservatives are largely, if understandably, at sea—unsure of what, exactly, to rally around, or what to demand from the candidates clamoring for their affections.Where social conservatives, not long ago, had hopes of repelling the “gay agenda" and turning back the trend toward normalizing homosexuality in America, they’re now reduced to rallying around an alleged campaign of persecution against outlying religious dissenters like Davis.
On Friday, in between speeches by the presidential candidates, I asked several activists about their strategy for preserving religious liberties. These folks expressed plenty of sympathy and respect for Davis, but had only the faintest idea of what to demand from Congress, state legislatures, or the presidential candidates to solve the problem. Like many, Ron Goss, a 69-year-old activist from Virginia, said he wanted the next president to obey the principles of a “Judeo-Christian nation.” Asked exactly what that would look like, Goss replied: “I would hope that people like Kim Davis wouldn’t be put in jail. We have the First Amendment.”
“You have to adhere to the Constitution—they’re not doing that,” saidMarty Moore, a 73-year-old activist from North Carolina. “They just need to protect the Constitution at all costs,” agreed Judith Neal, an activist from San Dimas, California. “They need to leave the first Amendment alone.”
The drift in the social-conservative agenda has been a gift to conservative Republicans: They're increasingly free to court the religious right with little more than toothless appeals to tribalism. This year, they had little to do but practice affinity politics, competing to see who could come off as the most ardent supporter of Davis and “religious liberties” rhetorically. And if there’s one thing that Republican candidates have learned, particularly in the Obama era, it’s how to tap into their base’s fear and anger without offering anything concrete.
Senator Ted Cruz, who is betting heavily that Christian conservatives will be moved to turn out for him in droves, had volunteers blanketing the summit with campaign stickers and signs. In his address on Friday, Cruz went on at length about his visit to Davis in jail. “Kim and I—we embraced, and I told her, ‘Thank you,’” he said, inspiring an emotional round of applause and affirmative shouts from the crowd. But Cruz’s call for action on the issue boiled down to a mere blanket promise, if he’s elected, “to instruct the Department of Justice and the IRS and every other federal agency that the persecution of religious liberty ends today!”
Former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee—who was so eager to own the issue, and revive his flagging campaign, that he refused to let Cruz speak at a rally when Davis was released last month—offered even less by way offeasible remedies. “The courts cannot make a law,” Huckabee declared, echoing his stance in the September GOP debate. “Kim Davis and people like her will never, ever go to jail if I am president of the United States!”
But even the most ardent faithful know that Huckabee’s prescription has already been leading nowhere: Davis, after all, defied federal authority by ignoring the law, arguing that “God’s authority” should take precedence over the Court’s ruling. And predictably enough, given the thinness of Davis’s constitutional challenge, it didn’t work. She was released from jail only after agreeing to a court order that she would allow the deputy clerks in her office to issue same-sex marriage licenses. An appeals court has rejected her attempt to appeal the court's demand.
Some prominent social conservatives worry that the Kim Davis mania is a sign the movement has become directionless, wasting valuable energy by looking in vain for political saviors and lionizing dissenters like Davis. “They’re always looking for a hero (or heroine), while the party’s other factions focus on staffing decisions and policy commitments, where the real work of politics takes place,” The New York Times' Ross Douthat wrote last week, in a column criticizing evangelicals' embrace of Dr. Ben Carson. But concrete policy demands, Douthat argues, are more important than ever, given the ground that conservative Christians have been losing: “With same-sex marriage established nationwide and social liberalism ascendant, religious conservatives have a clear policy ‘ask’ they should be pressing every major Republican contender to embrace.”
But what is the ask? Douthat recommends uniting behind Senator Mike Lee’s First Amendment Defense Act, which would prevent the federal government from denying tax exemptions, grants, contracts, or school accreditation based on opposition to gay marriage. But neither candidates nor activists were talking up Lee's bill at the summit. Embracing an incremental policy change would mean recognizing just how little room the religious right has left to maneuver on the issue; the rhetoric of persecution feels so much more empowering.
Rod Dreher, a popular Christian conservative commentator best known forCrunchy Cons, a book about environmentally minded social conservatives,told me by phone during the conference that he agrees that “the Kim Davis thing was such an enormous distraction—a waste of time and our rapidly diminishing political capital for a battle that we weren’t going to win.” Efforts to carve out accommodations for individual businesses that don’t want LGBT customers—another much-cheered talking point for activists at the summit—are similarly doomed, he believes. But there, Dreher parts with Douthat, and with the political activists who came to Washington over the weekend: He’s among those calling for evangelicals to admit defeat in the culture wars and choose the “Benedict Option,” focusing on strengthening one's own faith, family, and community, rather than continuing to fight unwinnable battles in the political arena.
He knows it’ll be a while before the political activists who flock to Values Voters will come around to that argument, if ever. “Evangelicals want the hero,” Dreher said, echoing Douthat; they want both martyrs to the cause, like Davis, and a presidential candidate who promises to turn their vague wishes into action. But there’s no consensus candidate to rally around in 2016, so far, any more than there is clear agreement on how to pursue religious liberties in practice. While Cruz easily topped the Values Voter straw poll, evangelicals have also flocked to Donald Trump, who’s successfully channeled their discontent despite his now-discarded pro-choice views, and Carson, who’s also benefitted from the rise of symbolism over policy, running as a devout Christian with few real policy proposals. At the summit, Trump's support for religious liberties amounted to a call for stores to say “Merry Christmas” instead of “Happy Holidays.” Carson was even more vague, simply calling “to stop letting the progressives drive God out of our land.”
The summit also revealed a generational split that is making a unified policy agenda harder for the religious right to find. Younger activists tended to favor putting same-sex marriage to the side, and wanted their fellow conservatives to focus on a more winnable fight: enacting abortion restrictions at the state level and fighting federal support for Planned Parenthood. For them, the highlight of the weekend was Friday afternoon's speech by David Daleiden, the 26-year-old activist behind the undercover Planned Parenthood videos. “Our foremost right is the right to life,” Ashley Traficant told me, a 25-year Liberty University student and Cruz volunteer.
But many of the Values Voters attendees were old-school social conservatives, still determined to keep fighting same-sex marriage and LGBT rights—somehow, someway. “Just because the Court put out an opinion doesn’t mean that it’s the law of the land,” said Mark Roepke, a 44-year-old activist from Arlington, Virginia. Roepke was one of the few I interviewed who brought up Lee’s First Amendment bill as a priority, and he wants state legislatures and Congress to “step up” and stop same-sex marriage from becoming legal everywhere. But he admitted that he wasn’t sure exactly how. “That’s for much smarter people than me,” Roepke said with a laugh. “Give me a path, and I’ll follow that path.”
Suzy Khimm is a senior editor at The New Republic.
Georgia Woman Kelly Gissendaner Sings 'Amazing Grace' During Execution
Pope Francis Tries To Stop Richard Glossip's Oklahoma Execution. New Evidence In Case
http://paxonbothhouses.blogspot.com/2015/09/pope-francis-tries-to-stop-richard.html
Georgia Woman Kelly Gissendaner Sings 'Amazing Grace' During Execution
A Georgia woman who was executed despite a plea for mercy from Pope Francis sang "Amazing Grace" until she was given a lethal injection, witnesses said.
Kelly Renee Gissendaner, who graduated from a theology program in prison, was put to death at 12:21 a.m. Wednesday after a flurry of last-minute appeals failed.
Gissendaner, who was sentenced to death for the 1997 stabbing murder of her husband at the hands of her lover, sobbed as she called the victim an "amazing man who died because of me."
She was the first woman executed in Georgia in 70 years and one of a handful of death-row inmates who were executed even though they did not physically partake in a murder.
Kelly Gissendaner hugs her daughter Kayla as she celebrates her graduation from a prison theology program in 2011. Ann Borden / Emory University
The mother of three was nearly executed in February, but the lethal injection was abruptly called off because the chemicals appeared cloudy.
After a new execution date was set, Gissendaner, 47, convinced the Georgia Board of Pardons and Paroles to reconsider her application for clemency.
In an extraordinary turn, Pope Francis — who called for a global ban on the death penalty during his U.S. visit last week — urged the board to spare her life.
Georgia woman Kelly Gissendaner executed despite pope's plea 0:58
Video: http://www.nbcnews.com/storyline/lethal-injection/pope-urges-halt-execution-georgia-woman-kelly-gissendaner-n435566
Georgia woman Kelly Gissendaner executed despite pope's plea 0:58
Video: http://www.nbcnews.com/storyline/lethal-injection/pope-urges-halt-execution-georgia-woman-kelly-gissendaner-n435566
"While not wishing to minimize the gravity of the crime for which Ms. Gissendander has been convicted, and while sympathizing with the victims, I nonetheless implore you, in consideration of the reasons that have been expressed to your board, to commute the sentence to one that would better express both justice and mercy," Archbishop Carlo Maria Vigano wrote on the pontiff's behalf.
Shortly thereafter, the board announced that it would not stop the execution.
The victim's family was split on whether Gissendaner should live or die: Her children appeared before the parole board to ask that their mom be spared the death chamber, but her husband's relatives said she did not deserve clemency.
Kelly Gissendaner's Daughter Speaks Out 0:42
Video: http://www.nbcnews.com/storyline/lethal-injection/pope-urges-halt-execution-georgia-woman-kelly-gissendaner-n435566
Kelly Gissendaner's Daughter Speaks Out 0:42
Video: http://www.nbcnews.com/storyline/lethal-injection/pope-urges-halt-execution-georgia-woman-kelly-gissendaner-n435566
"Kelly planned and executed Doug's murder. She targeted him and his death was intentional," Douglas Gissendaner's loved ones said in a written statement.
"In the last 18 years, our mission has been to seek justice for Doug's murder and to keep his memory alive. We have faith in our legal system and do believe that Kelly has been afforded every right that our legal system affords.
"As the murderer, she's been given more rights and opportunity over the last 18 years than she ever afforded to Doug who, again, is the victim here. She had no mercy, gave him no rights, no choices, nor the opportunity to live his life. His life was not hers to take."
Doug Gissendaner Family photo via WXIA
In the hours before her death, Gissendaner pressed a number of appeals, arguing that it was not fair she got death while the lover who killed her husband got a life sentence. She also said the execution drugs might be defective, and that she had turned her life around and found religion while in prison.
She requested her final meal last week: cheese dip with chips, Texas fajita nachos and a diet frosted lemonade.
Jeff Hullinger, a journalist with NBC station WXIA who witnessed the execution, later told reporters that Gissendaner appeared "very, very emotional, I was struck by that."
He added: "She was crying and then she was sobbing and then broke into song as well as into a number of apologies ... When she was not singing, she was praying."
Who Watches Inmate Executions in the U.S.? 0:42
Video: http://www.nbcnews.com/storyline/lethal-injection/pope-urges-halt-execution-georgia-woman-kelly-gissendaner-n435566
Who Watches Inmate Executions in the U.S.? 0:42
Video: http://www.nbcnews.com/storyline/lethal-injection/pope-urges-halt-execution-georgia-woman-kelly-gissendaner-n435566