Click here to get the direct telephone number for your two senators, along with suggested talking points for your call. Call your senators today to demand politely, but firmly, that they vote against S.909. Congress has refused to define the term “sexual orientation,” which means that all sexual orientations are protected.

 For years, AFA and other pro-family groups have issued warnings about federal Hate Crimes legislation. The reality is that the purpose of this bill is to silence those who speak out against homosexuality. If the legislation passes, pastors could be prosecuted under the federal inducement statute for preaching the biblical view of homosexuality. For example, a person could commit an act of violence against a homosexual individual and blame it on the pastor’s sermon. Similar laws have been used to prosecute religious speech in the U.S. at the state level and abroad.

The Senate is poised to pass S. 909, the “Hate Crimes” bill, unless there are an overwhelming number of phone calls today.

A San Diego pastor says county officials have told him he needs a permit to host a weekly Bible study in his home.

Pastor David Jones and his wife, Mary, were hosting the weekly study near their church, when they say they were visited by a county code enforcement officer. According to Dean Broyles, an attorney for the Joneses, the county official asked the pastor if they hosted a regular weekly meeting in their home, and if they prayed and said “Amen” and “Praise the Lord” at those meetings.

After replying in the affirmative to those inquiries, a subsequent citation notified the couple they were in violation of county regulations, should stop “religious assembly,” and needed to apply for a “major use” permit to continue the gatherings — a process that could cost several thousands of dollars.
 
Jones, his wife, and their attorney, Dean Broyles, were interviewed on the Fox News Channel. Broyles says the couple’s rights have been violated.
 
“The government may not prohibit the free exercise of religion,” says the attorney. “And I believe that our Founding Fathers would roll over in their graves if they saw that here in the year 2009 that a pastor and his wife are being told that they can’t have a simple Bible study in their own home.”
 
The American Family Association has launched an online petition drive related to the incident, asking the San Diego County Board of Supervisors to immediately stop interfering with the rights of individuals to hold Bible studies in their homes.
 
Jones and his wife say they will continue to challenge the county’s policy. About 15 people attend the weekly meetings.

This, my fellow Americans, is untolerable and un-American.  Stand up for liberty!!! 

When:
Saturday, August 22, 2008
6:30 PM - Open Bar & Silent Auction Start
7:00 PM - Dinner & Music
After Dinner - Keynote Address by Archbishop Timothy Broglio

Where:
Center for Pastoral Leadership
Founder’s Room
28700 Euclid Avenue
Wickliffe, OH 44092

Cost:
$50.00 per person, a 100% tax-deductible donation
The deadline for registration is Monday, August 17th.
Click Here to Register.

Questions?
Contact us at saintsdinner@clevelandcatholicforum.com or 440-623-9183.

The assessment reads like a sophomore’s bad political science essay in, for example, noting that right-wing extremism “may include groups and individuals that are dedicated to a single issue, such as opposition to abortion or immigration.”

“This is an very unfortunately named document,” Department of Homeland Security spokesperson Sara Kudon told me.

No lie.

The not-quite-classified but-also-not-meant-for-public-distribution assessment reads like a rookie mistake penned by political lightweights. But Kudan told me it was written by “career officials,” who had been working on the assessment for more than a year. (Read: DHS started working on this when George W. Bush was in charge.) That career officials would write such tripe should scare you.

Fox News posted a Jan. 26, 2009, assessment entitled, “Left-wing Extremists Likely to Increase Use of Cyber-Attacks Over the Coming Decade.” This would suggest equal-opportunity political targeting. Not so. The “left-wing” assessment named entities - the Earth Liberation Front, Stop Huntingdon Animal Cruelty, The Hacktivist, the Internet Liberation Front - and explained the methods used in specific and recent cyber-attacks. It also warned how specific groups - loggers, farmers and named corporations - were or could be targeted. That is, the “left-wing” assessment included information that would be useful to officials investigating crimes.

The “right-wing” document, however, targeted not activities, but political thought - opposition to abortion, immigration amnesty and gun laws. While the “left-wing” assessment reported on known criminal activities, the “right-wing” document started with the acknowledgment that Department of Homeland Security intelligence “has no specific information that domestic right-wing terrorists are currently planning acts of violence.”Source: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2009/04/15/ED5I1727J0.DTL

This, my fellow Americans, means that within the eyes of the Obama Administration you are a possible terrorist if you are pro-life, pro-second amendment (which means pro-constitution), for a secure border, or returning as a veteran from the wars in Iraq or Afghanistan.  Are there any facts behind this assessment? No.  It is completely made up.  This is big-brother at best, treason at worst.  This is unacceptable from our government.  This is not change we can beleive in, this is just stupid. What’s next, will church goers be named terrorists because they believe in God?

President Obama wants to rescind a Bush administration rule that strengthened job protections for doctors and nurses who refuse for moral reasons to perform abortions.

A Health and Human Services official said Friday the administration will publish notice of its intentions early next week, opening a 30-day comment period for advocates, medical groups and the public. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because the notice has not been completed.

The Bush administration instituted the rule in its last days, and it was quickly challenged in federal court by several states and medical organizations. As a candidate, Obama criticized the regulation and campaign aides promised that if elected, he would review it.

The news that he was doing so drew praise from abortion-rights supporters and condemnation from groups opposed to abortion.

“It would be a horrible move. These regulations were a long time coming,” said Tom McClusky, a vice president at Family Research Council. “What they seek to do is protect patients, nurses, doctors and other health care professionals from being forced to violate their consciences.”

McClusky and other abortion opponents said the Bush regulation clarified federal policies and raised awareness about the rights of medical providers to follow their consciences. But abortion rights advocates said it was vague and overly broad, and could reduce access to other services — allowing a drug store clerk to refuse to sell birth control pills, for example.

“I think it’s a wonderful step,” Rep. Diana DeGette, D-Colo., who co-chairs the Congressional Pro-choice Caucus and has introduced legislation to overturn the regulation, said of Obama’s move.

“That rule was actually a poorly drafted last-minute attempt to, I think, restrict health care access and I think it would have had far-reaching and unintended consequences.”

Federal law has long forbidden discrimination against health care professionals who refuse to perform abortions or provide referrals for them on religious or moral grounds. The Obama administration supports those laws, said the HHS official.

The Bush administration’s rule adds a requirement that institutions that get federal money certify their compliance with laws protecting the rights of moral objectors. It was intended to block the flow of federal funds to hospitals and other institutions that ignore those rights.

But the Obama administration was concerned that the Bush regulation could also be used to refuse birth control, family planning services and counseling for vaccines and transfusions.

“The administration supports a tightly written conscience clause,” said the HHS official. “While we are concerned about the Bush rule, we also understand there might be a need to clarify existing laws.”

The administration will review comments from the public before making a final decision. Options range from repealing the regulation to writing a new one with a narrower scope.

The administration’s move was first reported by the Los Angeles Times.

We always will have our economic downturns. They basically are cyclical and we’ve suffered through many since World War II. There is simply no way of getting away from them.

Our current situation, however, is quite different. This time the difficulties are not a few in numbers but entail a rather long list. Neither are they simplistic but instead very complex, and I believe that they will take quite a long time, perhaps even a decade, to resolve.

Instead of looking at a recession, we might very well be looking at a complete economic meltdown more global in nature, rather than national, something that most of us never have seen.

The problems include a very weak American dollar; a trade deficit that will come to roughly $700 billion at year-end; the cost of foreign oil that has literally tripled over the past two years; possible trade wars with countries like China, which own sizable portions of our bond markets; a ballooning federal budget that has gone from $2.1 trillion to $3.6 trillion in just eight years — a whopping growth of 75 percent; a national debt of $9.6 trillion, closing fast on $10 trillion with a debt ceiling placed at $10.6 trillion and which cost the American taxpayer $230 billion in interest alone last year; untold numbers of jobs that are being outsourced to foreign nations through Free Trade acts adding long-term pressure to unemployment; a nation which has maxed out on credit-card debt; millions of Americans losing their homes due to the subprime lending debacle; and last, but not least, tens of millions of baby-boomers now coming close to retirement, which will dry-up America’s tax base while adding huge amounts to Social Security and Medicare outlays.

A growing number of financial institutions, including banks, are tanking-out with government picking up the tab in bail-outs and payments to depositors at taxpayer expense. Bear Sterns, Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, and IndiMac and so many other big names, believe it or not, are only the early warning signs of what I fear is yet to come.

Neither presidential candidate, you will note, has done much talking about any of this either because he doesn’t have an answer; doesn’t want to give us the answers because this may only turnoff voters in the midst of a race for the nation’s highest office; or is simply afraid of panicking the nation, thereby adding fuel to the fire. All reasons have some validity.

If and when this meltdown does occur, whoever is president, of course, will be blamed and blamed heavily for the crisis, taking his party with him. But we should remember that successive administrations over the past 40 years all bear a share of the responsibility.

Both government and we overly consumer-minded Americans as well must realize that we cannot continue to spend what we do not have nor receive that for which we refuse to pay.

Put simply, there is no free ride in this world. And government at all levels, not only in Washington, has failed to understand this. Whoever wins this election had better be prepared to show some real leadership and be willing to take strong action immediately to save the nation from what could be tantamount to a catastrophe.

A good place to begin, I believe, would be freezing the federal budget and begin working toward some deep cuts and re-prioritizing expenses in favor of the nation’s infrastructure. Balancing our federal budget and making some headway against an out-of-control national debt are an absolute must.

There must be a return to sound fiscal policy.

Realizing that this could be political suicide for the new president, I can only say that he most likely will go down in history as the one who saved the nation.

 By: Paul M. Weyrich
Source: http://www.newsmax.com/weyrich/Economic_Crisis/2008/09/22/133116.html

When
Wednesday, August 20th At 12:00 Noon

Where
Sammy’s Metropolitan Ballroom
925 Euclid Ave.
Huntington Bank Building
Suite 2100
Cleveland, OH 44115

Cost
Tickets are $20.
Click Here To Order Your Tickets To
“Building A Culture of Life” With Fr. Frank Pavone.

About the Speaker
Fr. Frank Pavone is one of the most prominent pro-life leaders in the nation. He serves as the National Director of Priests for Life. He has traveled to all of the 50 states and to five continents, preaching and teaching the building of a culture of life. In 1999, Fr. Pavone was named among the Top 100 Catholics of the Century. He serves on Dr. James Dobson’s Focus on the Family Institute. The National Right to Life Committee awarded him their highest honor, the Proudly Pro-life Award. The Franciscan University of Steubenville bestowed on him an honorary doctorate, in recognition of his pro-life work. He is a leader of the people and countless lives have been saved due to his work.

When
Tuesday, September 16, 2008
7 PM - Talk
8 PM - Refreshments & Book Signing

Where
The Center for Pastoral Leadership
28700 Euclid Ave.
Wickliffe, OH 44092

Cost
Free Admission

About the Speaker
Dr. Robert Moynihan has interviewed and met with Pope Benedict XVI over 25 times, and is the publisher of the esteemed Inside the Vatican magazine. His new hit book “Let God’s Light Shine Forth: The Spiritual Vision of Pope Benedict XVI” is quickly gaining wide acclaim.