Techcordance

Prayer

(CNSNews.com) – Two top evangelical leaders sounded a defiant tone on the eve of National Day of Prayer — warning that the American right to freedom of religion “is being eroded every day” and may be lost in an onslaught of secularism unless Americans “have the guts to stand up.”
The Rev. Franklin Graham, who last month was officially “dis-invited” by the Army to speak at a National Day of Prayer ceremony at the Pentagon for statements he made about Islam, said he will not back down in preaching the Gospel as he sees it.
“We’re living in a time where we cannot compromise, we cannot back up, we cannot retreat,” Graham said Wednesday during a live Webcast from the Washington, D.C. offices of the Family Research Council.
“The Gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ is to be preached to the ends of the Earth – that’s what He’s called us to do,” he said.
Graham, the honorary chairman of this year’s National Day of Prayer, made his comments in a sermon to an audience of leaders making final preparations for Thursday’s National Day of Prayer.

Lawsuit

A Florida school district is being sued for “persistent and widespread” restrictions on religious expression. Liberty Counsel, a legal group often representing Christians in religious freedom and family cases, filed a lawsuit Tuesday on behalf of two dozen individuals against the Santa Rosa County School District and its Superintendent, Timothy Wyrosdick, for violations of First Amendment rights.
The plaintiffs – which include teachers, students, former students, parents, volunteers and local members of the community – complain that they have been censored, intimidated or harassed by the school district and its partner, the American Civil Liberties Union. Last year, the school district agreed to a Consent Decree drafted by the ACLU that restricts the practice or promotion of religious expression and activities by students. The decree was adopted after the ACLU sued Santa Rosa schools over the same issue – the right to pray and express religious beliefs in school.

Perspective

Mexican President Felipe Calderon has accused Arizona of opening the door “to intolerance, hate, discrimination and abuse in law enforcement.” But Arizona has nothing on Mexico when it comes to cracking down on illegal aliens. While open-borders activists decry new enforcement measures signed into law in “Nazi-zona” last week, they remain deaf, dumb or willfully blind to the unapologetically restrictionist policies of our neighbors to the south.The Arizona law bans sanctuary cities that refuse to enforce immigration laws, stiffens penalties against illegal alien day laborers and their employers, makes it a misdemeanor for immigrants to fail to complete and carry an alien registration document, and allows the police to arrest immigrants unable to show documents proving they are in the U.S. legally. If those rules constitute the racist, fascist, xenophobic, inhumane regime that the National Council of La Raza, Al Sharpton, Catholic bishops and their grievance-mongering followers claim, then what about these regulations and restrictions imposed on foreigners?
- The Mexican government will bar foreigners if they upset “the equilibrium of the national demographics.” How’s that for racial and ethnic profiling?
- If outsiders do not enhance the country’s “economic or national interests” or are “not found to be physically or mentally healthy,” they are not welcome. Neither are those who show “contempt against national sovereignty or security.” They must not be economic burdens on society and must have clean criminal histories. Those seeking to obtain Mexican citizenship must show a birth certificate, provide a bank statement proving economic independence, pass an exam and prove they can provide their own healthcare.  (See Perspective link for more)

Immigration

White House press secretary Robert Gibbs on Monday professed the administration’s admiration and affection for GOP Sen. Lindsey Graham and added: “I don’t know the degree to which that has complicated his life.”
Here’s a hint: Back home in South Carolina, Graham has been censured by multiple Republican county committees for his work on energy reform, immigration and other presidential priorities, and some detractors are pushing to have every GOP committee in the state issue similar rebukes. That helps explain why he reacted so sharply Friday to news that Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) and the White House wanted to move immigration reform — legislation that hasn’t even been written — onto the Senate calendar before a climate bill that Graham, Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass.) and Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.) were to unveil Monday. Graham had even tougher talking points late Monday: He emerged from a closed-door meeting with Kerry and Lieberman to say that immigration must be tabled altogether before he will agree to back any energy bill this year.

White House quiet, happy with spin.

Audio
In an interview with NY Times reporter Micheline Maynard this weekend, the reporter explains why the recent and numerous GM ads  are misleading.

Hidden Tax?

(CNSNews.com) – Economist and former House Majority Leader Dick Armey (R-Texas) said he “always believed” the Democrats would impose a value added tax (VAT) on top of all existing, current taxes when they took control of the House, Senate and White House. Armey described the VAT as the most “insidious tax of all.”
In an exclusive interview with Armey on Capitol Hill, CNSNews.com asked, “Paul Volcker, a senior economic adviser to President Obama, and several members of Congress, including Speaker Pelosi, have floated the idea of the VAT tax being implemented on top of current taxes. Would you support something like that? Why or why not?”
Armey said, “Absolutely not. Look, in 1994, I studied – actually, starting in the fall of ’93 – I studied all tax options out there, and I, of course, settled on the flat tax as the best option for a lot of reasons. The Value Added Tax was always the most insidious tax of all, and I always saw that – I’d seen that back in ’77.”

Demotion

A NASA employee in Pasadena, California, has filed suit over action taken against him for discussing intelligent design with other employees.David Coppedge, an information technology specialist and system administrator on the Jet Propulsion Laboratory’s mission to Saturn, claims he was harassed and demoted from a high-level job because he distributed DVDs that explain intelligent design.
Casey Luskin, an attorney with the Discovery Institute, tells OneNewsNow that NASA officials claimed intelligent design is religious material when it is really scientific.
“The evolution lobby has long claimed that intelligent design is religion and cannot be advocated in public schools,” Luskin reports. “But now they are claiming that intelligent design is religion and cannot even be talked about at scientific research organizations, whose primary goal is to study the origin of life.” The only employees who received the DVDs were willing recipients, and the Discovery Institute attorney explains that Coppedge “would offer these pro-intelligent design DVDs to his coworkers, and if they said that they were not interested, he would drop the matter. He was not pushy in trying to share these DVDs with his coworkers,” Luskin assures.Nonetheless, the NASA employee was accused of promoting ideas in a fashion that was unwelcome and disruptive, and he was charged with creating a hostile work environment. Action was taken without Coppedge being allowed to even see evidence against him, so now he is suing for religious discrimination, harassment and retaliation, violation of his free-speech rights, and wrongful demotion.

Promotion Denied

Dr. Mike Adams was on the academic fast track while serving the University of North Carolina-Wilmington as an atheist, but after the professor converted to Christianity in 2000, he alleges, the college put the clamps on his career.In a lawsuit against the university, Adams claims he was subject to unmerited complaints and “invasive” investigations following his conversion. Furthermore, he believes his application for promotion from associate professor to a tenured full professor was denied because his nationally syndicated columns were deemed too politically conservative by his leftist peers.”Christian professors should not be discriminated against because of their beliefs,” said David French, senior counsel with the Alliance Defense Fund, which is representing Adams in the case. “Disagreeing with an accomplished professor’s religious and political views is no grounds for refusing him promotion.”U.S. District Judge Malcolm J. Howard, however, ruled against Adams last month, quoting a fellow professor’s claims that Adams hadn’t met minimum research and writing requirements and that his Christian, conservative writings were not “scholarly work by the measures of our discipline.”But Adams contends his scholarly output surpassed that of almost all of his colleagues and that the senior faculty’s real beef with him lies in the content of his convictions.

Welfare

A leading free-market economist says it’s not a stable situation for a republican democracy when half of the citizens aren’t contributing to the cost of the government they’re benefiting from. J.D. Foster, a senior fellow at The Heritage Foundation, says it is pretty noteworthy when a center-left organization like the Tax Policy Center is pointing out that an enormous portion of Americans are not paying any income tax.”When you’re in a situation where half the people are not paying taxes into the government, there’s very little check on the size of the government because people are getting it for free.  That’s not a stable situation,” he notes. “The other part of it is we have to explain that what that means is these people are effectively on welfare,” he adds. “You’re getting services from the government and you’re not paying for it.”Foster says the country needs to explore tax reform ideas, but those ideas need to include making sure low- to middle-income Americans pay some nominal amount “just so they know they paid something into running their government.” The Washington-based Tax Policy Center estimates that about 47 percent of Americans will pay no federal income taxes at all for 2009.  Either their incomes were too low, or they qualified for enough credits, deductions, and exemptions to eliminate their liability.

Talk Radio

The Democratic National Committee’s Organizing for America has quietly launched an initiative aimed at making Obama supporters’ voices heard on the largely conservative airwaves.
“The fate of health reform has been a focus of debate in living rooms and offices, on TV and online — and on talk radio. And since millions of folks turn to talk radio as a trusted source of news and opinions, we need to make sure OFA supporters are calling in with a pro-reform message,” says the introduction to the online tool.
The online tool presents users with a radio show discussing political topics, to which supporters can listen live, and the phone number for that station, for when health care comes up. It also offers tips for callers and talking points on the issue.
My quick sampling produced Christian radio, a local talk station in Buffalo, and the syndicated talk shows of Dr. Laura Schlessinger and Sean Hannity — who will no doubt be thrilled with their new, liberal callers.
Supporters are then encouraged to report back on their encounters.
TechPresident’s Nancy Scola writes that the program is a product of a new push inside the organization to develop new software tools to give supporters “achievable, tangible tasks to do that fit into the nooks and crannies of their day to day lives.