Christian persecution

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News/Politics 5-8-13

What’s interesting out there today?

The 3 women rescued from captivity in Cleveland continues to be the headline. On the good side of this story the women have been reunited with family. What a joyous occasion that must have been. After it seemed all hope was lost, the families finally get to be together. And Cleveland dishwasher Chuck Ramsey is being hailed as a hero.

But on the bad side of the story, the details can be hard to read, so a CONTENT WARNING!!!

This is a pretty good summary of the details so far, with numerous links to different sources. From WeaselZippers

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If you’re interested, here’s a link for the live stream of the Benghazi Hearings from the House Oversight Committee It starts at 11:30AM EST

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Mark Sanford has defeated Elizabeth Colbert Busch in the S.C. special election for a House seat. From NBCNews

“Once the disgraced and tearful figure at the epicenter of an embarrassing scandal, former South Carolina Gov. Mark Sanford will return to public life as a U.S. congressman.

The Associated Press has projected Sanford to be the winner of Tuesday’s special election in South Carolina’s 1st Congressional District race.

Sanford, a Republican, defeated Democrat Elizabeth Colbert Busch after a race that captivated national media attention despite the district’s solidly Republican record. The win caps an unlikely ascent to political redemption after Sanford’s extramarital affair and subsequent divorce made him fodder for national headlines and late-might comedy sketches.”

The comment section is full of upset Dems, so be warned.

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These next 2 are on the danger, hostility, and difficulties facing brothers and sisters in the Mid East and Africa. From FoxNews

“A mass exodus of Christians is currently underway.  Millions of  Christians are being displaced from one end of the Islamic world to the  other.

We are reliving the true history of how the Islamic world, much of which  prior to the Islamic conquests was almost entirely Christian, came into  being.

The U.S. Commission on International  Religious Freedom  recently said: “The flight of Christians out of the region is unprecedented and  it’s increasing year by year.”  In our lifetime alone “Christians might  disappear altogether from Iraq, Afghanistan, and Egypt.””

The next one is from CBN

“Last year more Christians were killed in Nigeria than any other country. The onslaught of bombings gave Nigeria the sad distinction of being the nation with the highest Christian death toll.

More than 900 Christians reportedly were killed in Nigeria in 2012, all victims of the Boko Haram group and other Islamic militants.

“They are so radical they don’t even spare Muslims. If Muslims are sympathetic to any cause at all…if they are sympathetic to the Christians cause, or the minorities cause, they are also termed as infidels,” Mark Lipdo, program coordinator for the Stefanos Foundation, said.

In 2013, radicals have killed more than 120 Nigerians, most of them Christians.”

And yet in many instances in the Mid East and Libya, our govt. supports those perpetrating the violence against them.

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Next we have Biden and Democrats attempting to use churches to push their agenda. He’d like churches to make a gun control, and immigration argument for them from the pulpit. No mention of separation of church and state here though. From CNSNews

“Vice President Joe Biden wants pastors, rabbis and nuns to tell their flocks that enacting gun control is the moral thing to do. But another vote may have to wait until Congress wraps up work on an immigration overhaul.

Biden met for two-and-a-half hours Monday with more than a dozen leaders from various faith communities — Christian, Jewish, Muslim and Sikh, to name a few. Both Biden and the faith leaders encouraged each other not to give up on what has been an arduous and thus far fruitless effort by Biden and President Barack Obama to pass new gun laws in the wake of December’s schoolhouse shooting in Connecticut.

Around a large, circular table in a conference room on the White House grounds, Biden waxed optimistic about prospects for passing a bill, according to four participants who spoke to The Associated Press after the meeting. Biden’s chief of staff, Bruce Reed, joined the group, as did a handful of Obama aides who work on faith-based outreach. The meeting closed with a meditation and a prayer for action.”

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And I wonder if that has anything to do with this, or if it’s just a coincidence? Either way, it’s good news. From HotAir

“Obama administration retreating from contraception mandate?”

“At least in one instance, and it’s an important one.  Last November, Tyndale House Publishers won a third injunction against the Department of Health and Human Services to block enforcement of the HHS mandate, while the Obama administration took the absurd position that a publisher of Bibles didn’t qualify for a religious exemption.  Yesterday, HHS threw in the towel, at least for now:

In a huge victory for pro-life advocates taking on the controversial HHS mandate, the Obama administration is giving up its effort to force a Bible publisher to obey it.”

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And this last one, he’s still one of the few good men willing to stand on, and up for, his beliefs. From CNSNews

“Amid increased reports of a policy for courts martial over so-called proselytizing in the military, Coast Guard Rear Admiral William D. Lee recalled giving a Bible to a distressed serviceman who had previously tried to kill himself.

“Yet, if I do something, such as I did several weeks ago when I was looking into the face of a young man, 20-something years old, who had 18 months before put a gun to his head and pulled the trigger and survived, when I looked at that young man and I heard his story, the rules say send him to the chaplain. My heart said, give this man a Bible,” Lee said last week during a speech on the National Day of Prayer on Capitol Hill.”

““The higher you are, the more vulnerable you are to being taken down,” Lee continued. “You get in the cross hairs of those people who lay and wait outside the gate, waiting to take us to task for expressing our faith for so much as whispering to a young man who is on his last hope that ‘there is hope. Take it home. We can talk about it if you want.’ The lawyers tell me that if I do that, I’m crossing the line. I’m so glad I have crossed that line so many times.””

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by

News/Politics 3-16-13

What’s interesting in the news today?

There’s all kinds of stuff to choose from today.

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The Muslim Brotherhood is now cracking down on women’s rights.

From Reuters

“The Islamist movement that backs President Mohamed Mursi gave 10 reasons why Muslim countries should “reject and condemn” the declaration, which the U.N. Commission on the Status of Women is racing to negotiate a consensus deal on by Friday.”

“Egypt has joined Iran, Russia and the Vatican – dubbed an “unholy alliance” by some diplomats – in threatening to derail the women’s rights declaration by objecting to language on sexual, reproductive and gay rights.

The Muslim Brotherhood said the declaration would give “wives full rights to file legal complaints against husbands accusing them of rape or sexual harassment, obliging competent authorities to deal husbands punishments similar to those prescribed for raping or sexually harassing a stranger.”

Liberals are finally starting to wake up to what it is they backed under the guise of Democracy. Buyer’s remorse.

From TheNYTimes

““A woman needs to be confined within a framework that is controlled by the man of the house,” Osama Yehia Abu Salama, a Brotherhood family expert, said of the group’s general approach, speaking in a recent seminar for women training to become marriage counselors. Even if a wife were beaten by her husband, he advised, “Show her how she had a role in what happened to her.”

“If he is to blame,” Mr. Abu Salama added, “she shares 30 percent or 40 percent of the fault.”

Now, with a leader of the Brotherhood’s political arm in Egypt’s presidential palace and its members dominating Parliament, some deeply patriarchal views the organization has long taught its members are spilling into public view. The Brotherhood’s strident statements are reinforcing fears among many Egyptian liberals about the potential consequences of the group’s rise to power and creating new awkwardness for President Mohamed Morsi as he presents himself as a new kind of moderate, Western-friendly Islamist.”

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Meanwhile in Libya, Coptic Christians are being tortured into converting to Islam.

From AsiaNews.it

“Libyan Salafis are responsible for torture, attempts to forcibly convert and desecration of Christian imagery. This is according to  44 of the 48 Egyptian Coptic vendors on their return home. “They forced us to pronounce the al-shahaadatayn – said one of them – the proclamation of the Islamic faith and spit on images of Pope Shenouda III.” So far, the Egyptian government has not reacted to the episode that involved its citizens nor charges of religious discrimination. However, the relatives of the victims are demanding justice and accuse the Islamist government of protecting the Libyan Salafists.

Arrested in mid-February in the Benghazi market, accused of publicizing religious images and illegal immigration, the Coptic Orthodox were held for several days in a jail guarded by Salafi armed guards. They were released after several days of negotiations between the Egyptian and the Libyan governments accused on several occasions of failing to protect foreign nationals in its territory. Currently four Christians are still detained in Libya for further investigation.

The case has also sparked outrage among the population of Benghazi, which in October revolted against the Salafi militias accused of having organized the attack on the U.S. consulate in which the US Ambassador Christopher Stevens was killed.”

And the govt. we’re propping up ignores it. Just like those responsible for the Ambassador’s murder.

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Here’s an interesting read on the new Pope, and the liberal disappointment over the choice. Mild Content Warning! Liberals can be quite crass.

From NationalReview

“I may be a Reformed Protestant, but I still care a great deal about the new pope. He is, after all, only the world’s most prominent advocate for the Gospel of Jesus Christ, and Christians everywhere should be grateful that the new pope is by all credible accounts a humble, devout man with a heart for the “least of these.” In fact, for millions of our more secular citizens, the Catholic Church is essentially a stand-in for all (orthodox) Christendom, and critiques of Catholics are often critiques of all Christianity.

I was reminded of this fact when I read Frances Kissling’s recent piece in The Nation – highlighted again today in response to the selection of the new pope. Kissling, some may recall, is the past president of a group called “Catholics for Choice.” Kissling contends that the new pope (no matter who he is) will change nothing, and nothing will ever change until, well, Catholics stop being Christian. Feast your eyes on this critique:

“As long as Catholics are expected to accept rigid, sexist and blatantly illogical doctrine, there can be no real change in the church. From the Vatican down to the local parish priest, the early narratives—stories, really—that sought to explain who we are, why we are here, and the meaning of life are still taught, despite the fact that they are even less credible explanations of who we are than they ever were.”

And it goes downhill from there.

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Another piece on the intended, but unmentioned, costs in ObamaCare.

From TheWallStJournal

“Big government likes big providers. That’s why ObamaCare is gradually making the local doctor-owned medical practice a relic. In the not too distant future, most physicians will be hourly wage earners, likely employed by a hospital chain.

Why? Because when doctors practice in small offices, it is hard for Washington to regulate what they do. There are too many of them, and the government is too remote. It is far easier for federal agencies to regulate physicians if they work for big hospitals. So ObamaCare shifts money to favor the delivery of outpatient care through hospital-owned networks.

The irony is that in the name of lowering costs, ObamaCare will almost certainly make the practice of medicine more expensive. It turns out that when doctors become salaried hospital employees, their overall productivity falls.”

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Debt? What debt? Oh that. Sure it’s a big number, but it’s not a problem.

No really. Stop laughing, he’s serious. 😯

From CNSNews

“Rep. John Conyers (D-Mich.), the ranking member of  the House Judiciary Committee,  said on Thursday that the nation’s  current debt of $16.7 trillion is “not endangering” the country,  adding that “some debt is not a bad idea”  and that he and other congressional Democrats “don’t think  there’s a problem.”

Conyers and other liberal Democrats spoke at a Capitol Hill press  conference about their initiative to compel Congress to cancel the  across-the-board budget cuts (sequester) of  $1.2 trillion over 10 years, which actually are reductions in the rate of increase in federal spending and amount to $44 billion for this year.”

“Conyers said, “Let me let you understand, first of all, that the debt  is not endangering us a bit — not at all. Our economists say we’re in  debt but it’s not endangering everything. As a matter of fact, there are  economists that say some debt is not a bad idea at all.”

“So all those ideas about the ceiling falling, the walls caving in  because of that, you can sleep more comfortably in your bed at night  when you realize that we don’t think there’s a problem,” he said.”

I don’t know about you, but I feel better already. 🙄

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But don’t worry, it’s not all bad today. 🙂

From DetroitCBSLocal

” A federal judge has blocked the Obama administration from requiring Domino’s Pizza founder Tom Monaghan to provide mandatory contraception coverage to his employees under the federal health care law.”

“On Thursday, U.S. District Judge Lawrence Zatkoff granted a preliminary injunction against enforcement of the law against Monaghan and Domino’s Farms.”

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