Please sign NJDC's petition to urge CNN, FOX News, NBC, ABC, and CBS to stop inviting Ann Coulter as a guest to comment on politics.
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Full Petition Text:
We are writing to ask you to refrain from inviting Ann Coulter to participate as a guest on your network's news programming.
As you know, it has long been documented that Ms. Coulter takes liberties with the facts. Furthermore, her comments -- be they about Democrats, 9/11 widows, Jews, or others -- often border on hate speech.
While Ms. Coulter has her freedom of speech, you have the freedom to exercise better judgment. You wouldn't put people who claim Martians roam the earth to frequently comment on science. It is time to stop putting Ms. Coulter on the air to comment on politics, thus giving her free publicity and attention.
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Also, if you are on Facebook, check out and join the group: Christians Who Think Jews Are Perfect Just the Way They Are
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NY Times:Legal or Not, Abortion Rates Compare:
By ELISABETH ROSENTHAL
Published: October 12, 2007
ROME, Oct. 11 — A comprehensive global study of abortion has concluded that abortion rates are similar in countries where it is legal and those where it is not, suggesting that outlawing the procedure does little to deter women seeking it.
Moreover, the researchers found that abortion was safe in countries where it was legal, but dangerous in countries where it was outlawed and performed clandestinely. Globally, abortion accounts for 13 percent of women’s deaths during pregnancy and childbirth, and there are 31 abortions for every 100 live births, the study said.(snip)
“We now have a global picture of induced abortion in the world, covering both countries where it is legal and countries where laws are very restrictive,” Dr. Paul Van Look, director of the W.H.O. Department of Reproductive Health and Research, said in a telephone interview. “What we see is that the law does not influence a woman’s decision to have an abortion. If there’s an unplanned pregnancy, it does not matter if the law is restrictive or liberal.”
But the legal status of abortion did greatly affect the dangers involved, the researchers said. “Generally, where abortion is legal it will be provided in a safe manner,” Dr. Van Look said. “And the opposite is also true: where it is illegal, it is likely to be unsafe, performed under unsafe conditions by poorly trained providers.”
The data also suggested that the best way to reduce abortion rates was not to make abortion illegal but to make contraception more widely available, said Sharon Camp, chief executive of the Guttmacher Institute.
]]>c/o NY Sun:
Fox Is Pushing For Iran War, Senator Says
By JOSH GERSTEIN
Staff Reporter of the Sun
August 23, 2007
Senator Sanders of Vermont is backing a campaign to warn Americans that Fox News is using jingoistic programming to push the nation into a military attack on Iran. Mr. Sanders, a self-described socialist who caucuses with the Democrats, joined with a liberal filmmaker yesterday to denounce the popular cable channel for leading a drumbeat in favor of a military strike against Tehran.
"The leader of that effort is Fox News, which, in many ways, is a propaganda machine," Mr. Sanders said during a conference call with reporters and bloggers. He said the network was echoing "increased rumblings" from President Bush and Vice President Cheney about the prospect of an attack on Iran.
]]>But, if I approached this story with all of the nuance of a New Atheist, I would have to conclude as follows: once again, moderate and progressive new atheists are secretly at fault because they assume that the Atheist viewpoint is entitled to automatic respect, when we all know that deep down, all new atheists love to torture Buddhist monks and nuns-- and to wear endangered tiger skins into the bargain. (That's right, the Chinese Government ordered Tibetans to wear animal skins and fur--because the Dalia Lama, who is sensitive to endangered animal issues, opposes their use in religious and cultural ceremonies.)
]]>Thanks to your calls to Congress & our collective efforts we earned a major victory for children's health. Last week, before going on recess, the House and Senate each passed separate bills to renew the State Children's Health Insurance Program (SCHIP). Both bills commit additional funding for the program over five years and ensure that millions more children will have access to health care.
But our work is not over. The President has threatened to veto these bills and send millions of children to the ranks of the uninsured. We must keep this from happening by securing enough Congressional support to override a veto and by convincing the President that providing children health insurance is the right thing to do.
Build support for SCHIP and send a strong message to our leaders on children's health:
Sign an SEIU petition to Congress requesting full funding for children's health.
Join First Focus' letter writing campaign directed to the First Lady Laura Bush
]]>This insanity doesn't compare to me, somehow, on the moral scale with all of the religious folks,from all faiths most recently half a million liberal Catholics, who have opposed the War in Iraq. But how is this relevant to Hitchens' new book God is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything? He makes similarly repugnant arguments there--including willing away the historical challenge to the moral superiority of atheists presented by mass murderers Pol Pot and Stalin--as this excellent review by associate Atlantic Monthly editor Ross Douthat points out.
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Did Jesus laugh? The fictitious dispute in Umberto Eco’s novel The Name of the Rose “is more than fiction. It reflects a line of tradition which really existed, from John Chrysostom through Augustine to Bernard of Clairvaux and Hugo of St Victor, of the Christian denunciation of laughter” (Karl-Josef Kuschel). Nor is such a “theology of tears” limited to the world-denying, death-obsessed zeitgeist of the Middle Ages. John Wesley once disciplined a preacher on the charges (in ascending order?) of heresy, adultery – and the man’s proneness to “break a jest, and laugh at it heartily.” Here, from Beckett’s Molloy, Moran debates the issue with Father Ambrose, who sides with Eco’s Jorge (a Dominican – who is blind):
“What a joy it is to laugh, from time to time, he said. Is it not? I said. It is peculiar to man, he said. So I have noticed, I said. A brief silence ensued. […] Animals never laugh, he said. It takes us to find that funny, I said. What? he said. It takes us to find that funny, I said loudly. He mused. Christ never laughed either, he said, so far as we know. He looked at me. Can you wonder? I said.”
You laughed, right? Christ, I reckon, would have cracked up too! Did he not have a Beckett-like sense of the absurd (gnats and camels, logs and splinters), the ironic (calling Simon a Πετρος, telling fishermen where to fish), and even the coarse (suggesting that one go starkers in court [Matthew 5:40], insinuating that the Pharisees are full of crap [Mark 7:15]). And is anyone going to tell me that a man who likes to party, with a reputation to go with it, doesn’t like a laugh? So with many a Renaissance Humanist, Eco’s William of Baskerville (a Franciscan, one of God’s “merry men” – who can see because he wears spectacles) was surely right: of course Jesus laughed!
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