Tortured Logic

In an odd twist, Donald Rumsfeld also contradicts Pete King: http://www.newsmax.com/Headline/DonaldRumsfeld-gitmo-waterboarding-osamabinladen/2011/05/02/id/394820

While some conservatives are complaining that we don't vigorously interrogate suspected terrorists anymore, it was the Bush administration that eventually  stopped such practices as threatening to sexually assault a prisoner with a broomstick, have female soldiers pose with naked prisoners in stress positions, and sleep deprivation. Both candidates McCain and Obama acknowledged that brutal interrogations were a betrayal of the Constitution, could provide false information, and a threat to our own soldiers' security. During his imprisonment in Viet Nam, John McCain was tortured and signed an anti-American confession. McCain agreed to admitting lies under torture because that is what his captors wanted, and they eventually got it.

 It's the same story in our President's town of Chicago.  Judge Milton Shadur of the U.S. District Court (N.D. Ill.) found that:

“It is now common knowledge that in the early to mid-1980s Chicago Police Commander Jon Burge and many officers working under him in the physical abuse and torture of prisoners to extract confessions.” U.S. ex rel. Maxwell v. Gilmore 37 F. Supp.2d 1078 (N.D. Ill. 1999)

More about torture in Chicago can be found here: http://humanrights.uchicago.edu/chicagotorture/timeline.shtml

A Trip Down Memory Lane

What Would Jesus Take?

Lawrence O'Donnell on the Profit Limbaugh's theology:

A Belated Happy Earth Day

In the midst of uncertainty, opinions on the human prospect have tended to fall loosely into two schools. The first, exemptionalism, holds that since humankind is transcendent in intelligence and spirit, so must our species have been released from the iron laws of ecology that bind all other species. No matter how serious the problem, civilized human beings, by ingenuity, force of will and - who knows — divine dispensation, will find a solution.

Population growth? Good for the economy, claim some of the exemptionalists, and in any case a basic human right, so let it run. Land shortages? Try fusion energy to power the desalting of sea water, then reclaim the world's deserts. (The process might be assisted by towing icebergs to coastal pipelines.) Species going extinct? Not to worry. That is nature's way.
—Edward O. Wilson, "A suicidal impulse," The Toronto Star, June 13, 1993

The War on Easter

Baskets packed with artificial grass, dyed eggs, jelly beans and foil wrapped chocolate rabbits. Peter Cottontail hopping along the bunny trail. Big screen adventures of the Easter Bunny joining a rock band. It's yet another year where we forget the TRUE meaning of the season: to celebrate the time of seeding with the great fertility goddess Ostara.

Ooops

Gun Belonging to Pastor Terry Jones Goes Off Outside FOX 2 Studios

AND NOW FOR SOMETHING COMPLETELY DIFFERENT...

Conservative Quiz

If you agree with the following 10 statements, I'd say y0u are a 100% American-style Christian Conservative...

A little over 10,000 years ago, God-who is a male and looks like a human-created the universe and life on Earth during six busy days.

The first woman was made from the rib of the first man in the Garden of Eden on the first Saturday (or maybe Friday).

It is God's will that women be subservient to men.

God is broken up into three persons, one being the father of the second, who was born to a virgin just over 2000 years ago, and the third being a Holy Ghost.

Anyone who has not accepted "Jesus Christ as their personal savior" will burn in Hellfire for all eternity.

Sex between unmarried adults is sinful, but sex between adults of the same sex is an abomination.

The moment human sperm and egg meet, they form a microscopic human being with an immortal soul that is already damned to Hell because of original sin.

Any religion other than ultra-orthodox Christianity (and possibly Judaism) is really a form of devil worship.

Faith healers can cure disease if the afflicted person's belief in God is strong enough.

America is a Christian nation that has turned its back on God by allowing evil or misguided liberals to destroy our nation's morality through sex education, social welfare programs for the lazy, ending organized school prayer, legalizing abortion, and promotion of the homosexual agenda.

The Joy of Text

Newspeak isa lang n Jorge Orwellz novl 1984 delibr8ly promoD by st8. Newspeak based on en bt hs a gr8ly simplifyd vocab n gramA. Diz suits d regime of d Repoconz, who aim 2 mke Ny altrntve thinking a
"thoughtcrime"

Kiss your Left Behind Goodbye

Worried that you will be raptured and your unsaved friends and relatives will be lost when left behind? Then check out:

http://www.youvebeenleftbehind.com/

Programmed and run "by Christians, for Christians," they have

set up a system to send documents by the email, to the addresses you provide, 6 days after the "Rapture" of the Church. This occurs when 3 of our 5 team members scattered around the U.S fail to log in over a 3 day period. Another 3 days are given to fail safe any false triggering of the system.

Of course the team running this website will be elsewhere when the messages are sent, but I wonder if they have someone who is a secular humanist or Jewish or Islamic to check that the chaos of the Rapture doesn't result in a power loss to their state of the art computer system.