Freedom of Religion, Right?

So, one of the Republican presidential hopefuls believes towns should have the right to ban mosques. Really, this is the sort of person the Republicans allow to challenge for their ticket?

Last I checked, the United States allowed freedom of religion. One would think that would allow the building of places to practice your religion in wouldn't it? Or, should we go the China route? Maybe make some official state approved mosques for them to go to or else they can just have "home mosques."

He states his concerns center around Sharia law. Ok, I agree. We can't allow religious laws to trump state laws. Certain Muslim sects, and nations, practice versions of Sharia law that are abhorrent and cannot be tolerated in our country. However, those nations are set up as Islamic Nations! It is PART of who they are. It is NOT part of what America is. If practicing aspects of Sharia law, breaks American law, well I'm sorry, the freedom to practice your religion only goes so far. Just ask David Koresh.

I'm also curious as to what he thinks about Judaism after reading this quote from him.

In reference to allowing towns to ban mosques Cain said. "They are objecting to the fact that Islam is both religion and (a) set of laws, Shariah law. That's the difference between any one of our other traditional religions where it's just about religious purposes."

Well, Orthodox Judaism is exactly that. A set of laws. And interestingly enough, they've worked their way into our society with only occasional hiccups. But those problems are dealt with by our legal system.

Finally, Mr. Cain apparently wants to insure any possible radicals stay heavily underground. What's easier to check up on? A mosque where the clerics are known in the community? Or should we force them to practice their religion underground where no one has a clue how radical their teachers might be?

I find it interesting Mr. Cain has chosen to take this route. I guess its easy to prey on fear-mongering among the bigoted and weak-minded, but that's, hopefully, not a path to our Presidency.

I firmly believe that Muslims have as much right as any other religious group to build places of worship. (Sometimes subject to local codes, etc, but the basis for denial of a building permit should never be the faith.) I also firmly believe that we have the laws in place to protect those who could possibly be harmed if some of the more extreme and unfortunate varieties of Sharia were attempted to be followed in the US.

What happened to being FOR allowing people to be free instead of taking rights away from them?

No One Cared

Its a moot point now, but I'll say it anyway:

If you didn't live in LA, or weren't traveling to LA this weekend, you didn't care in the slightest about the "Carmageddon" Interstate shutdown for repairs.

People whine and cry about the media being too biased. I'm whining and crying about the media being too stupid.

This WAS NOT NEWS. It might have been news in LA, I understand. But the coverage it has been getting (seeing the bylines on Google and Yahoo news, from sources as varied as Washington Times to the New York Times).

Now, I understand, lots of news organizations have bloggers that post under the umbrella of a newspaper or whatever.

I still respond, "So? How was this something relevant for a blogger in NY or DC to have a comment on it?"

Yup, here's a blogger in IL commenting on it, but no one cares what I think anyway.

Its a pathetic statement of our news organizations that the have pretty much given up truly covering events overseas or even events in the US anymore due to cost cutting and instead serve up pseudo-news tripe to get click throughs on the web and ad dollars on TV.

Its sad. We have the freedom of the press and we waste it on "Carmaggedon" and Casey Anthony.

Edit: I actually clicked on one of the links last week as I was curious as to what LA had to do with Carmaggedon.

Intriguing...I may have options...

Mitt Romney has declined to sign a second hard right, social conservative "pledge."

First he declined to sign the Susan B Anthony list hard-line anti-abortion pledge. (Anti-abortion in all circumstances, no possible option for rape, incest or life of mother threats.)

Now he has declined to sign the "conservative marriage vow" put out by the Family Leader which in its first iteration stated that more black families had 2 parent homes during slavery than they do today. Talk about complete context fail. Wow.

They changed the language after black pastors complained about the wording, but Romney still declined while stating he supported "traditional marriage."

I'll admit that Romney's Mormon faith makes him a hard candidate for me to accept. I need to see more of his economic policy suggestions to truly overcome my concerns, but it looks like the Romney might emerge as a possible alternative to wasting my vote to keep some far right candidate being elected.

I'm pretty sure 15 months from now when the election is happening, I'll look and laugh or cry at this post, but oh well. Its here. Laugh.

The GOP is broken...and the Democrats are missing out.

Leadership. Its a word that's bandied about in various walks of life. Its something that is completely and utterly lacking in too many facets of life. Our current president has lacked it, as have the leadership in the House and Senate both under Republican and Democratic leadership.

The GOP however, are broken. The Democrats are a joke to a large degree, but the Republican party which is completely beholden to Grover Norquist's "we can't raise taxes at any cost" mantra are broken.

Did you read about the GOP's suggestion on how to raise revenue? It can't be taxes, we'll sell some gov't land. What? Seriously? This is the same joke that states with "balanced budget amendments" (like Illinois) have been doing for years.

We don't want to raise taxes, so we'll sell something that is finite. Brilliant.

People can disagree on how to cut the deficit. Its fine to compromise, but the GOP refusal to allow taxes to be raised, at least to pre-Bush tax cut level is moronic. (Oh, and to the point of lack of leadership Obama's caving on extending the Bush tax cuts is but one of many examples.)

You cannot cut spending out of this. Let me put it this way, you would have to cut EVERYTHING THAT IS NOT MEDICARE, SOCIAL SECURITY AND DEBT PAYMENTS out of the budget to balance it. EVERYTHING.

I'm not saying cuts don't need to be made, they do. I'm not saying tough decisions don't have to be made, they of course do. I'm not saying I'll be happy with where some of the cuts come from, I won't. But tax increases (which are actually closer to a normalization to the pre-Bush era) have to be part of this. And serious tax law changes must happen so that hedge fund managers cannot pay less % in taxes than a doctor or engineer.

If the GOP wants to seriously contend for the presidency and have any sort of legitimacy not built on fear and hatred then moderate party members must stand up and speak out. Currently we have a GOP that is controlled by the moderately far right and the really far right (just stopping short of the extreme far right). This hatred of all things "tax" related while they were happily spending away during the Bush years MUST END. Oh, and yeah, it'd be nice if the President had stood up on that issue when the Bush tax cuts came up for extension last year. See, I'm not just one sided on this.

The GOP desperately needs some members who can still stand for traditional Republican values without being borderline crazy. I'd prefer to have an option to vote for besides Democrat or no one.