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Show posts MenuQuoteThe secret of Palin's presidential potential is the Republican Party's affection for winner-take-all primaries. According to my friend Elaine Kamarck's invaluable new book, Primary Politics, 43 percent of the 2008 Republican delegates were selected in primaries where the winner corralled all the delegates by winning a state or congressional district. As a result of the Republicans' to-the-victor-go-the-spoils method of picking convention delegates, Mike Huckabee finished second in 16 states and won a paltry 74 delegates for his trouble.
QuoteIf Palin launches a 2012 race – and survives the South Carolina primary with her aura intact – she could theoretically sweep the winner-take-all states without ever winning a majority anywhere. The Republican establishment (the congressional leadership, the governors, the major donors and national consultants) could all agree that Palin would be an electoral disaster against Obama in November and still be powerless to halt her juggernaut.
QuoteIf you visit Ireland after October, you'd better watch what you say about God.
A blasphemous slip of the tongue could cost you 25,000 euros under revamped legislation that will soon be signed into law.
Blasphemy is an act of challenging or offending a religious belief.
In recent years, western countries such as England have been taking blasphemy laws off the books, or changing their focus so that they cover hate-related crimes in general. Ireland has taken a different approach, updating its legislation but maintaining a focus on religion.
In Ireland, it has been a crime to publish blasphemous material since 1961, although nobody has ever been convicted. The Seanad, the Irish senate and upper level of parliament, passed the Defamation Bill in July that makes uttering blasphemy a crime as well.
The bill was originally proposed in 2006. It worked its way through parliament and received final approval on July 10 this year, when it passed by a slim margin of 23-22.
Lorraine Weinrib, a law professor at the University of Toronto, says the bill is a modern update of blasphemy laws.
"I don't see this as a new thing as much as an old thing that hasn't quite disappeared in Ireland," she says.
"Unlike the old blasphemy laws which only protected the dominant religion [Roman Catholicism] ... this one seems to protect all religions, so it kind of has a modern equality bent to it," Weinrib adds.
But blasphemy laws can have an impact on freedom of expression, Weinrib says.
"They create a crime where one of the basic elements of the crime is subjective outrage of particular people. So there's really no objective measure, and this can cause a disruption in the modern understanding of the relationship between religion and the public space of a liberal democracy."
Even so, Weinrib points out that under Ireland's new legislation, in order to be found guilty, there has to be proof that the offender intended to cause outrage with a statement that is abusive or insulting. The statement also has to produce a violent reaction.
The bill states that a person publishes or utters blasphemous matter if:
* He or she publishes or utters matter that is grossly abusive or insulting in relation to matters held sacred by any religion, thereby causing outrage among a substantial number of the adherents of that religion.
* He or she intends, by the publication or utterance of the matter concerned, to cause such outrage.
The bill puts the onus on a defendant to prove that a reasonable person would find genuine literary, artistic, political, scientific, or academic value in the matter to which the offence relates.
"I think we're talking about central issues — for example, a depiction of Christ as a homosexual ... many religious people find this outrageous and their reaction is intense," says Weinrib. "The intent of the outrage still needs to be proven in this case."
Ireland is not alone in having laws that take aim at blasphemy.
Canada lists blasphemous libel as a crime under the Criminal Code, which carries a penalty of up to two years in jail. But the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms guarantees free speech rights that supersede the blasphemy law.
The Canadian code says, "No person shall be convicted of an offence under this section for expressing in good faith and in decent language, or attempting to establish by argument used in good faith and conveyed in decent language, an opinion on a religious subject."
Many countries have abolished their blasphemy laws in recent years. In Britain, the Church of England (and by default, Christianity) was protected from blasphemy up until last year when the government reviewed the law. The U.K. voted to abolish blasphemy laws on Jan. 10, 2008.
In the United States, blasphemy has never been considered a crime.
In countries where Islam is the state religion, blasphemy is still considered a serious offence. In countries like Pakistan and Afghanistan, the penalty for blasphemous crimes can be execution.
A number of Islamic countries have been pursuing an international anti-blasphemy resolution at the United Nations that would restrict any speech that is offensive to any religion. But that approach assumes everyone is religious, Weinrib says, and issues can crop up when two religious groups have contradictory points of view.
QuoteHoly moly!
What in the name of all that is good and godly is going on?
In a season supposed to be filled with glad tidings of God echoing throughout the land, we have the president of the United States questioning the Bible's literal content and a major newsmagazine suggesting the Good Book has no problem with same-sex marriage.
In case you missed it, President George W. Bush was asked this week if the Bible is literally true.
"You know. Probably not," Bush told ABC's Cynthia McFadden. "No, I'm not a literalist, but I think you can learn a lot from it, but I do think that the New Testament for example is ... has got ... You know, the important lesson is 'God sent a son."'
He also said he thinks God's creation of the Earth could have taken place along with human evolution.
"I don't think it's incompatible with the scientific proof that there is evolution," he said.
QuoteCameron cited a 1978 Kinsey Institute study that found 23% of surveyed homosexual men admitting to having had sex with boys.
"The cant that 'gay parents are no more likely to molest' is not based on evidence but liberal ideology," said Cameron.
"By endorsing gay adoption, President Obama, the state of North Carolina, and Duke University share blame for this tragedy. These policy makers let dogma blind them to evidence that has been in the literature for years."
http://video.google.co.uk/videoplay?docid=-7294526473944146040&ei=hJThSayiFcqK-QaQwpGUCQ&q=Documentaries&hl=en&dur=3&st=day&client=firefox-a
Quote"To those who would crush religious freedom, our message is plain: you may jail your believers. You may close their churches, confiscate their Bibles, and harass their rabbis and priests, but you will never destroy the love of God and freedom that burns in their hearts. They will triumph over you." These remarks were in President Ronald Reagan's speech to the National Religious Broadcasters on January 31, 1981, during his second week in office as president and a couple months before he was almost assassinated.
Undoubtedly, President Reagan was mostly speaking to the communist dictatorships in the world at the height of the Cold War. However, if he was president this year, he could well be speaking to Canada and Sweden, etc. which have thrown pastors in jail for preaching the Bible from their pulpits on politically-incorrect topics.
America is quite close to emulating these countries, so President Reagan could just as well be warning the ACLU-types and other left-wingers in America whose ultimate goal is to establish similar laws as Sweden, Canada, etc. using such laws as so-called "hate crime" laws to stifle religious freedom. Indeed, the United States Congress is very close to passing such a "hate crime" law which Barack Obama has promised to sign into law.
Quote
Political scientists Brendan Nyhan and Jason Reifler provided two groups of volunteers with the Bush administration's prewar claims that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction. One group was given a refutation -- the comprehensive 2004 Duelfer report that concluded that Iraq did not have weapons of mass destruction before the United States invaded in 2003. Thirty-four percent of conservatives told only about the Bush administration's claims thought Iraq had hidden or destroyed its weapons before the U.S. invasion, but 64 percent of conservatives who heard both claim and refutation thought that Iraq really did have the weapons. The refutation, in other words, made the misinformation worse.