And the massive ACORN voting fraud?

You’ll recall that in the final presidential debate, Sen. McCain said that ACORN—the poor-voter-registering, community organizing group— was “on the verge of maybe perpetrating one of the greatest frauds in voter history … maybe destroying the fabric of democracy.“ Wow!

Let’s see how it turned out:

clipped from tpmmuckraker.talkingpointsmemo.com Despite last minute legal wrangling on Election Day eve, Florida’s election came off without a hitch, with no reports of voter fraud and few problems. Statewide, voting went so smoothly that Florida Secretary of State Kurt Browning called Election Day ”almost eerily quiet,” despite an unofficial record turnout. ”It’s been a great day for Florida,” he said. clipped from tpmmuckraker.talkingpointsmemo.com “Compared to 2006, Colorado is doing fabulously,” said Jenny Flanagan, executive director of Common Cause. clipped from tpmmuckraker.talkingpointsmemo.com “Voter Fraud” Van Hollen: Wisconsin Voting Goes Smoothly clipped from tpmmuckraker.talkingpointsmemo.com PA: No Voter Fraud Issues, Despite GOP Suit clipped from tpmmuckraker.talkingpointsmemo.com NV: GOP Voting Fears Unfounded “We’ve been preparing for virtually every possibility we could imagine. But to this point, none of those scenarios have come to pass. clipped from tpmmuckraker.talkingpointsmemo.com IN: Despite GOP Warnings of Voter Fraud, “It Was a Good Clean Election.” had called on law enforcement authorities to investigate ACORN, claiming evidence of widespread registration fraud

Ah, glorious hyperbole.

It’s worth remembering, though. This issue will come ’round again in four years, unless I miss my guess.

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Tags: McCain, ACORN, voter+fraud, ACORN+fraud, voter+registration, GOP+vote+suppression, election+fraud, Monte Asbury

Cornel West: the fundamental question of politics

Cornel West, in an interview about the state of the presidential campaign, offers a breathtaking vista of the purpose of it all:

clipped from www.democracynow.org CORNEL WEST: I think that we’re beginning to move to some of the serious subject matters, but we’ve still got a long way to go, though, Amy. You know and I know that the fundamental question is always, what is the quality of service to everyday people, what the depth of love and sacrifice to empowering everyday people.

For students of the life of Jesus, would not this question be consistent with his day-to-day passion? Yet have we ever heard it said? How far removed is Christianity from its Christ, when people of faith agitate for exclusion or condemnation or national supremacy!

Click on the link for the rest of the interview.

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Tags: Cornel+West, presidential+candidates, Democrats, Republicans, religion+and+politics, religious+right, Obama, Clinton, Edwards, Monte Asbury

Scandalous, barrier-scorning love (sermon of May 6, 07)

Fifth Sunday of Easter: May 6, 2007
John 13:31-35, Revelation 21:1-6, Acts 11:1-18, Psalm 148

Preparations:
– hand out a sheet of 8.5 X 11 paper to each person (from the recycle bin);
– tape used flipchart sheets over windows (white-side facing us);
– set an empty chair on the platform and conceal it with a sheet of flipchart paper hanging in front of it

Music: Indescribable, Light the Fire, Bind Us Together, The Servant Song, I Am Loved

Prayer – Pastor Sharon Armstrong
Welcome – Evie Richardson

John 13:31-35: A New Command

31-32When he had left, Jesus said, “Now the Son of Man is seen for who he is, and God seen for who he is in him. The moment God is seen in him, God’s glory will be on display. In glorifying him, he himself is glorified—glory all around! 33″Children, I am with you for only a short time longer. You are going to look high and low for me. But just as I told the [other] Jews, I’m telling you: ‘Where I go, you are not able to come.’

34-35″Let me give you a new command: Love one another. In the same way I loved you, you love one another. This is how everyone will recognize that you are my disciples—when they see the love you have for each other.”

We’re on the eve before the cross. This last talk of Jesus to his disciples started back at the chapter’s beginning – and the topic was the same: “having loved his own … he loved them to the end.” And he strips off his clothing …

Gov. Huckabee Decides God No Longer Omnipresent

Poor little god!

Gov. Huckabee says God has been “systematically . . . removed from our schools.” (You know, as in: “should we be surprised that our schools become places of carnage?”)

I have seen people removed from schools.  A police officer – usually large – escorts away a scrawny 7th grader who’d done something along the lines of smoking dope in the bathroom. The kid vanishes, last seen as a pair of small eyes barely elevated enough to peer solemnly out the cruiser’s back door window. Removed.

Apparently, something similar happened to Gov. Huckabee’s god.

Too bad. Some kind of law enforcer that must’ve been, stronger than god and all. Some pathetic little god that was, too, that heavies could just toss him into the back seat and whisk him away.

I wonder what god it was.  Does it sound like the same one who spoke to Job:

“Where were you when I laid the earth’s foundation?
Tell me, if you understand.
Who marked off its dimensions? Surely you know!
Who stretched a measuring line across it?

On what were its footings set,
or who laid its cornerstone—
while the morning stars sang together
and all the angelsshouted for joy?”

And

“Can you bind the chains of the Pleiades?
Can you loosen Orion’s belt?
³² Can you bring forth the constellations in their seasons^[c]
or lead out the Bearwith its cubs?
³³ Do you know the laws of the heavens?
Can you set up God’s dominion over the earth?

Has that God ever been small enough to be “systematically removed” from any place in the cosmos?

See, I know students and teachers and administrators and bus drivers and secretaries and custodians and para-professionals who pray their way through every day of their public school careers. They’re pretty convinced that “the LORD our God is near us whenever we pray to him . . . ” Right there. In school. They don’t pray “on street corners” “to be seen by others,” (as Matthew describes – and that kind, when commanded by staff people, is illegal, thank God.) They pray, instead, secretly, to a God who is unseen, believing that he hears and responds.

That kind of prayer in school is protected by every court in America.

Wouldn’t that kind of God have to be present now, right now, everywhere, no matter what people do? And, as far as that God being “systematically removed,” well, LOL.

 

 

 

Harkin: An Apology For Slavery

Iowa’s Sen. Tom Harkin spoke on June 18th in support of a bill that made an official government apology to black Americans for slavery in the United States, and for the government’s long failure to act against it. I am proud that one of my state’s Senators was a key mover in the apology. Every time America honestly faces the dark sides of its past, we become a better people.

Does it end racial division? Of course not. But, as with all trauma, healing only happens in small steps. Words are always part of those steps.   Some may say “Talk is cheap, nothing is solved, this Senate didn’t cause slavery anyway.”  But we are responsible for our history, and I’ll take an apology over official silence any day.

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Today, Senator Tom Harkin delivered remarks on the Senate Floor just prior to the passage of S. Con. Res. 26, which he introduced and co-sponsored. The transcript follows.

“Madam President, the clerk just read for the first time ever in this body what we should have done a long time ago. An apology for slavery and the Jim Crow laws which, for a century after emancipation, deprived millions of Americans their basic human rights, equal justice under law and equal opportunities. Today the Senate will unanimously make that apology.