A Letter to Dr. Laura

It's been circulated a lot, but always worth another read!

Dear Dr. Laura:

Thank you for doing so much to educate people regarding God's Law. I have
learned a great deal from your show, and try to share that knowledge with as
many people as I can. When someone tries to defend the homosexual lifestyle,
for example, I simply remind them that Leviticus 18:22 clearly states it to be
an abomination. ...End of debate. I do need some advice from you, however,
regarding some of the other specific laws and how to follow them.

1.. When I burn a bull on the altar as a sacrifice, I know it creates a
pleasing odor for the Lord - Leviticus 1:9. The problem is my neighbors. They
claim the odor is not pleasing to them. Should I smite them?

2.. I would like to sell my daughter into slavery, as sanctioned in Exodus
21:7. In this day and age, what do you think would be a fair price for her?

3.. I know that I am allowed no contact with a woman while she is in her
period of menstrual cleanliness - Leviticus 15:19-24. The problem is, how do I
tell? I have tried asking, but most women take offense.

4.. Leviticus 25:44 states that I may indeed possess slaves, both male and
female, provided they are purchased from neighboring nations. A friend of mine
claims that this applies to Mexicans, but not Canadians. Can you clarify? Why
can't I own Canadians?

5.. I have a neighbor who insists on working on the Sabbath. Exodus 35:2
clearly states he should be put to death. Am I morally obligated to kill him
myself?

6.. A friend of mine feels that even though eating shellfish is an abomination
- Leviticus 11:10, is it a lesser abomination than homosexuality. I don't
agree. Can you settle this?

7.. Leviticus 21:20 states that I may not approach the altar of God if I have
a defect in my sight. I have to admit that I wear reading glasses. Does my
vision have to be 20/20, or is there some wiggle room here?

8.. Most of my male friends get their hair trimmed, including the hair around
their temples, even though this is expressly forbidden by Leviticus 19:27. How
should they die?

9.. I know from Leviticus 11:6-8 that touching the skin of a dead pig makes
me unclean, but may I still play football if I wear gloves?

10.. My uncle has a farm. He violates Leviticus 19:19 by planting two
different crops in the same field, as does his wife by wearing garments made of
two different kinds of thread (cotton/polyester blend). He also tends to curse
and blaspheme a lot. Is it really necessary that we go to all the trouble of
getting the whole town together to stone them? - Leviticus 24:10-16. Couldn't
we just burn them to death at a private family affair like we do with people
who sleep with their in-laws? (Leviticus 20:14)

I know you have studied these things extensively, so I am confident you can
help. Thank you again for reminding us that God's word is eternal and
unchanging.

Your devoted disciple and adoring fan.

in defense of biblical marriage

With thanks to Caleb.

in defense of biblical marriage...funny

CODIFYING ``BIBLICAL PRINCIPLES'' OF MARRIAGE
House of Representatives
February 25, 2004
Remarks by Representative Jim McDermott (D-WA)


Mr. Speaker,

The Presidential Prayer Team is currently urging us to: "Pray for the President as he
seeks wisdom on how to legally codify the definition of marriage. Pray that it will be
according to Biblical principles. With any forces insisting on variant definitions of
marriage, pray that God's Word and His standards will be honored by our government."
This is true..


A. Marriage shall consist of a union between one man and one or
more women. (Gen 29:17-28; II Sam 3:2-5)

B. Marriage shall not impede a man's right to take concubines in addition to his wife or
wives. (II Sam 5:13; I Kings 11:3; II Chron 11:21)

C. A marriage shall be considered valid only if the wife is a virgin. If the wife is not a
virgin, she shall be executed. (Deut 22:13-21)

D. Marriage of a believer and a non-believer shall be forbidden. (Gen 24:3; Num 25:1-9;
Ezra 9:12; Neh 10:30)

E. Since marriage is for life, neither this Constitution nor the constitution of any State,
nor any state or federal law, shall be construed to permit divorce. (Deut 22:19; Mark
10:9)

F. If a married man dies without children, his brother shall marry the widow. If he refuses
to marry his brother's widow or deliberately does not give her children, he shall pay a fine
of one shoe and be otherwise punished in a manner to be determined by law. (Gen. 38:6-
10; Deut 25:5-10)

Finally, it says that since there is no law that can change things, divorce is not possible...

Think about it! Does this sound like the America that you want to live in? Do you think
that codifying marriage entirely on biblical principles is a good idea?

homophobia leads to these things...

Just something found on my friend Caleb's MySpace site:

homophobia leads to these things...


I am the boy who never finished high school, because I got called a fag everyday

I am the girl kicked out of her home because I confided in my mother that I am a lesbian.

I am the prostitute working the streets because nobody will hire a transsexual woman.

I am the sister who holds her gay brother tight through the painful, tear-filled nights.

We are the parents who buried our daughter long before her time.

I am the man who died alone in the hospital because they would not let my partner of twenty-seven years into the room.

I am the foster child who wakes up with nightmares of being taken away from the two fathers who are the only loving family I have ever had. I wish they could adopt me.

I am not one of the lucky ones. I killed myself just weeks before graduating high school. It was simply too much to bear.

We are the couple who had the realtor hang up on us when she found out we wanted to rent a one-bedroom for two men.

I am the person who never knows which bathroom I should use if I want to avoid getting the management called on me.

I am the mother who is not allowed to even visit the children I bore, nursed, and raised. The court says I am an unfit mother because I now live with another woman.

I am the domestic-violence survivor who found the support system grow suddenly cold and distant when they found out my abusive partner is also a woman.

I am the domestic-violence survivor who has no support system to turn to because I am male.

I am the father who has never hugged his son because I grew up afraid to show affection to other men.

I am the home-economics teacher who always wanted to teach gym until someone told me that only lesbians do that.

I am the woman who died when the EMTs stopped treating me as soon as they realized I was transsexual. (yes, this actually happened)

I am the person who feels guilty because I think I could be a much better person if I didnt have to always deal with society hating me.

I am the man who stopped attending church, not because I don't believe, but because they closed their doors to my kind.

I am the person who has to hide what this world needs most, love.

I am the person ashamed to tell my own friends im a lesbian, because they constantly make fun of them.

I am the boy tied to a fence, beaten to a bloody pulp and left to die because two straight men wanted to "teach me a lesson"

I am the person that cannot be him self in his house cause my parents are religious and in the bible it says that Adam is suppose to be with Eve not with Steve.

U.S. Banana Republic

Cartoonist: Kirk Anderson

Why do 'liberal media' go so easy on Bush?

Dave Zweifel — 11/26/2007 11:38 am

If a president can be impeached for lying about an extramarital affair, then why aren't we impeaching a president who lied to his country to start a war that is soon to have lasted five long years?


We saw another example last week of the double standard that permeates so much of America's media these days, the media that so many conservatives claim are "too liberal."

A sneak peek at former White House press secretary Scott McClellan's soon-to-be-published book reveals that virtually every bigwig in the Bush administration passed along lies about who was involved in outing CIA agent Valerie Plame -- including the president himself.

McClellan in 2003 stood at the White House press room podium and said that neither Karl Rove nor Scooter Libby, the two most senior aides to George Bush and Dick Cheney, had anything to do with leaking to several members of the press that Plame was an undercover CIA agent. She was exposed in an apparent retaliation for a guest column her husband, former Ambassador Joseph Wilson, had written for the New York Times, claiming that Bush had lied about Iraq's nuclear capabilities in his State of the Union address.

As it later turned out, not only was Bush's speech a lie, but McClellan's defense of Rove and Libby was also an outright lie. McClellan's memoir, to be published next spring, claims that five of the highest-ranking officials in the administration were involved in his telling that lie to the press and the rest of the nation: Rove, Libby, the vice president, the president's chief of staff and the president himself.

But the McClellan excerpts got little play last week in our so-called anti-George Bush liberal media.

Contrast that with what would have undoubtedly happened had the president been Bill Clinton.

Not only would Fox News, Rush Limbaugh and Ann Coulter have begun a 24/7 feeding frenzy, but every TV network and big city daily newspaper would have carried major stories about the president being fingered in another lie.

Wisconsin's own intellectual giant of a congressman, James Sensenbrenner, would have insisted on the House Judiciary Committee calling for an investigation that would surely lead to impeachment proceedings.

They did all that, after all, when Bill Clinton was caught lying about messing around with a White House intern. Had Bill Clinton lied his way into starting a war and then instructed his press secretary to tell the American people lies about underhanded dealings by his staff, the Washington politicians and the national press would have run the man out of town on a rail.

Perhaps this administration has lied to the American people so many times that it doesn't qualify as news anymore.

But, I say again, if a president can be impeached for lying about an extramarital affair, then why aren't we impeaching a president who lied to his country to start a war that is soon to have lasted five long years?

Dave Zweifel is editor of The Capital Times. dzweifel@madison.com

'Fair and Balanced' Media

Progressive Daily Beacon
www.progressivedailybeacon.com
A. Alexander, November 24th, 2007

Conservatives used to decry American media as being "Liberal," but what they really meant was that our media used to practice good judgment and common decency. Talent-less hatemongers such as Ann Coulter and Sean Hannity would never have been deemed worthy of a national television or radio audience. Hannity especially, with nothing to offer but rage and hate, most certainly would not have been given his own television program.

And why would the Coulters and Hannitys not have been provided a stage from which they could spread their hate? Was it really because the media had a "Liberal bias"? The answer, of course, is no! Common decency and ethical standards would have and still should, preclude spiteful and rage-filled people from being given an outlet. After all, what real value do Hannity, Coulter and most Conservative media personalities really provide society? The answer is that they contribute nothing to American society and even less to genuine political discourse!

And sorry, but not providing merchants of hate and ignorance a national media outlet is not infringing upon their right to free speech. Hannity and Coulter and all the other Conservative peddlers of hate could express themselves on blogs, or stand on street corners, or have billboards erected ... and all this they could do without anybody impeding upon their right to do so. However, it is morally and ethically unacceptable that television and radio companies provide time on public-owned airwaves for the likes of Hannity and Coulter to insult and willfully mislead the American people -- to lie to the American people -- and to spew their hatred. More than that, it shows a total lack of good judgment and common decency!

So, if in the past common decency would have prevented American media from providing airtime to purveyors of hate, what changed? What changed is that so-called Conservatives searched the globe and found an Australian man, Rupert Murdoch, who didn't care a spit about the wellbeing of the United States or common decency. The Republican Party helped Mister Murdoch's News Corp gain a toehold in America, so that his vast media empire could be used as the means through which the United States would be converted into what it has become today: A government corrupted and perverted by corporate greed and a military tool to be used solely for the purpose of securing petroleum and other resources for global corporations.

Mister Murdoch's media, especially FOX News, has been designed for one purpose and one purpose only: To serve as the megaphone through which the voices of hatred and intolerance can be amplified and, in this manner, use base emotions, especially fear, to keep people distracted from real issues ... real issues, like the fact that their freedoms and liberties are being erased, while a self-anointed privileged class robs the government's treasury and gives all the taxpayers' money to corporate crony pals.

Republicans know that none of this could have been accomplished through the traditional American media, which was owned and operated by corporations and people that at least pretended to have the United States and American peoples' best interest at heart. Traditional American media used to employ some small degree of good judgment and common decency as a guide in determining who was or wasn't granted access to the peoples' public-owned airwaves. The Conservatives' Rupert Murdoch uses only what is best for his and his corporate buddies' bottom line to guide his programming decisions. That is what Conservatives mean by 'Fair and Balanced' media.

$46 Thousand Dollars!!!!

The surge in Bush war spending

Robert Scheer, Creators Syndicate, Inc.

Wednesday, November 21, 2007

What can you get for a trillion bucks? Or make that $1.6 trillion, if you take the cost of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars as tallied by the majority staff of Congress' Joint Economic Committee (JEC). Or is it the $3.5 trillion figure cited by Ron Paul, whose concern about the true cost of this war for ordinary Americans shames the leading Democrats, who prattle on about needed domestic programs that will never find funding because of future war-related government debt.

Given that the overall defense budget is now double what it was when Bush's father presided over the end of the Cold War, at a time when we don't have a militarily sophisticated enemy in sight, you have to wonder how this president has managed to exceed Cold War spending levels. What has he gotten for the trillions wasted? Nothing, when it comes to capturing bin Laden, bringing democracy to Iraq, or preventing oil prices from tripling and enriching the ayatollahs of Iran while messing up the American economy.

But that money could have paid for a lot of things we could have used here at home. As Paul points out, for what the Iraq war costs, we could present each family of four a check for $46,000 - which exceeds the $43,000 median household income in his Texas district. He asks: "What about the impact of those costs on education, the very thing that so often helps to increase earnings? $46,000 would cover 90 percent of the tuition costs to attend a four-year public university in Texas for both children in that family of four. But, instead of sending kids to college, too often we're sending them to Iraq, where the best news in a long time is they aren't killing our men and women as fast as they were last month."

How damning that it takes a libertarian Republican to remind the leading Democratic candidates of the opportunity costs of the Iraq war that most Democrats in Congress had voted for. But they don't need to take Paul's word for it; last week, the majority staff of the Joint Economic Committee in Congress came up with similarly startling estimates of the long-term costs of this war.

The White House has quibbled over the methods employed by the JEC to calculate the real costs of our two foreign wars, because the Democrats in the majority dared to include the long-term care of wounded soldiers and the interest to be paid on the debt financing the war in their calculations. Of course, you need to account for the additional debt run up by an administration that cut taxes, instead of raising them to pay for the war, by relying on the Chinese communists and other foreigners who hold so much of our debt. As the JEC report, compiled by the committee's professional staff, concluded, "almost 10 percent of total federal government interest payments in 2008 will consist of payments on the Iraq debt accumulated so far."

However, even if you take the hard figure of the $804 billion the administration demanded for the past five years, and ignore all the long-run costs like debt service, we're still not talking chump change here. For example, Bush just asked for an additional $191 billion in supplementary aid for his wars, which is $55 billion more than the total spent by the U.S. government last year on all of America's infrastructure repairs, the National Institutes of Health, college tuition assistance and the SCHIP program to provide health insurance to kids who don't have any.

In fact, on this matter of covering the uninsured, it should be pointed out, to those who say we (alone among industrialized nations) can't afford it, that we could have covered all 47 million uninsured Americans over the past six years for what the Iraq war cost us. How come that choice - war in Iraq or full medical coverage for all Americans - was never presented to the American people by the Democrats and Republicans who voted for this war and continue to finance it?

Those now celebrating the success of the surge might note that, as the JEC report points out, "maintaining post-surge troop levels in Iraq over the next 10 years would result in costs of $4.5 trillion." Until the leading Democratic candidate faces up to the irreparable harm that the red-ink spending she authorized will do to needed social programs over the next decades, I will be cheering for the libertarian Republican. At least he won't throw more money down some foreign rat hole.

E-mail: rscheer@truthdig.com.