Student GOP leader smears Obama via old reliable racial slur

I defy anyone to say that Obama's race won't be a factor in this election. At least the young man didn't use code words like "reverse discrimination," "welfare queen," or (dare I say it) "community organizer."

Student GOP leader resigns over Obama remark

The leader of a statewide group of college Republicans has been forced to resign after posting racially insensitive comments about Democratic presidential nominee Barack Obama on the Internet.

Adam LaDuca, 21, the former executive director of the Pennsylvania Federation of College Republicans, wrote on his Facebook page in late July that Obama has "a pair of lips so large he could float half of Cuba to the shores of Miami (and probably would.)"

LaDuca, who previously had called Martin Luther King Jr. a "pariah" and a "fraud," also wrote: "And man, if sayin' someone has large lips is a racial slur, then we're ALL in trouble."

The College Republicans asked LaDuca to resign after his remarks were publicized by the Pennsylvania Progressive, a blog written by a Democratic committeeman from Berks County. The group announced LaDuca's resignation on its Web site Friday.


Anti-gay industry tries to shore up its base

Those who have read this blog know what I am about to say:

I hate Mondays.

This Monday has an interesting note to it. I am currently trying to recover from the Republican National Convention. And in the middle of my attempts comes this news:

CHICAGO -- Declaring that clergy have a constitutional right to endorse political candidates from their pulpits, the socially conservative Alliance Defense Fund is recruiting several dozen pastors to do just that on Sept. 28, in defiance of Internal Revenue Service rules.

The effort by the Arizona-based legal consortium is designed to trigger an IRS investigation that ADF lawyers would then challenge in federal court. The ultimate goal is to persuade the U.S. Supreme Court to throw out a 54-year-old ban on political endorsements by tax-exempt houses of worship.

"For so long, there has been this cloud of intimidation over the church," ADF attorney Erik Stanley said. "It is the job of the pastors of America to debate the proper role of church in society. It's not for the government to mandate the role of church in society."

Yet an opposing collection of Christian and Jewish clergy will petition the IRS today to stop the protest before it starts, calling the ADF's "Pulpit Initiative" an assault on the rule of law and the separation of church and state.

Backed by three former top IRS officials, the group also wants the IRS to determine whether the nonprofit ADF is risking its own tax-exempt status by organizing an "inappropriate, unethical and illegal" series of political endorsements.

I am not against churches inviting candidates to speak to the congregation (as long as they extend the invitation equitably) and I am certainly not against objective voter registration drives at churches nor am I against churches organizing carpools to get members to the polls.

But a pastor advocating a particular candidate from the pulpit is dangerous.

Regardless as to how the ADF tries to spin the situation, the only reason why it is trying to overturn this law is so that James Dobson, Rod Parsley, and company can better organize churches to elect their candidates to public office.

I find that sleazy.

Pastors are the leaders of the church, so they don't represent themselves per se, even if they stand in the pulpit and say "in my personal opinion, you should support so and so."

The pastor is still speaking as the leader of the church. Anything he or she does in that role affects more than just themselves.

Futhermore, I don't like the implications behind pastors advocating political candidates.

Pastors are the spiritual leaders in the community. What message are they sending by supporting a particular candidate - "God wants you to support so and so?"

Encouraging pastors to do this reduces the integrity of religion as far as I am concerned. Religion and spirituality has to do with souls and your relationship with God, not electoral candidates and certainly not trying to "win a nation for Christ."

Seems to me that if Jesus wanted this nation, he could take it without any of our help.

But yet in this country, there is this nasty idea that Jesus somehow said, "take up your cross and follow me and I will give you a nice car, nice house, two point five children, and a Republican in the White House every four years."

Humbleness and simplicity are replaced with warehouse sized churches filled with egotistical people thinking that God has blessed them above all others, demagogues waving Bibles as they confuse spiritual completeness with earthly conquest, and words like "morality," and "values" used to create a caste systems ruled by unrealistic characteristics of family.

And on top of all of this, some Christians propagate the lie that they are somehow "second class citizens in America."

I don't think it has come to that. But I wish these so-called Christians remember that "pride goeth before a fall" and sooner or later "you reap what you sow."