Courts looking for evidence of religious animus in the White House's "travel ban" directed against majority-Muslim nations will not have to look very far. A look at the White House guest list will suffice.
On Monday night, Brigitte Gabriel, head of ACT for America, tweeted that she was, “In D.C, preparing for my meeting at the White House. What topics would you like me to address?” Among the replies: “Ban sharia law from US,”, “Officially identify Islam as a political system and not a ‘religion’” and “ask how we can get islam [sic] ed out our schools & universities?”
No one familiar with Gabriel—a Lebanese-born Christian who distorts Lebanese history to incite hatred of Muslims—would find those replies surprising. Her organization, ACT for America, is the largest grassroots purveyor of anti-Muslim bigotry in the United States.
Gabriel's organization has been a prominent part of the extremist anti-Muslim movement for years; Gabriel not only promotes conspiracy theories of "sharia" infiltration but declares Islam itself to be incompatible with American citizenship. ACT has a close relationship with this White House; now-departed Michael Flynn was last year announced as an advisery member of their board of directors.
In 2007, [Gabriel] declared that “If a Muslim who has—who is—a practicing Muslim who believes the word of the Koran to be the word of Allah, who abides by Islam, who goes to mosque and prays every Friday, who prays five times a day—this practicing Muslim, who believes in the teachings of the Koran, cannot be a loyal citizen to the United States of America.” After Khizr Khan held up a copy of the US Constitution in his speech at last year’s Democratic national convention, Gabriel accused him of lying. “Waving the Constitution,” she declared, “is a misrepresentation when one’s religion teaches that it and any other man-made law, for that matter, are to be removed and superseded by the Quran.”
As pure aside: A useful exercise, here in America, would be to prop a video camera in front of any conservative Christian legislator and ask them whether or not they believe "God's law" supersedes American law if the two are in conflict. Or you could ask the conservative evangelical voters that keep electing disgraced Alabama judge Roy Moore to office. Or you could ask, say, Brigitte Gabriel, on her way to or from the Trump White House or Mar-a-Lago, where she has also enjoyed Donald Trump's hospitality.
But that is neither here nor there; the more immediate news is that the Trump White House continues to solicit the input of those that believe Islam itself to be an enemy of America. Which, in the numerous court cases now wending their way through the system, will probably come up.
TWEET OF THE DAY
BLAST FROM THE PAST
At Daily Kos on this date in 2011—What do all Scandinavians, Belgians and the Dutch have that 52 million Americans don't? Health care:
That's the kind of headline that pisses off Republicans and their enablers. Comparing the good ol' USA with anything...ewwwwwww … European is barely short of treasonous. Of course, if they had an ounce of real pride in their country and compassion for their fellow Americans, they would be irked not by the headline but by its accuracy. What they have instead is an open spigot of cash from corporadoes keen on keeping a health-care system that costs more but delivers less than health-care systems in Europe and Canada.
During 2010, according to theCommonwealth Fund's Biennial Health Insurance Survey released last Tuesday, 52 million Americans—that's the total population of Sweden, Finland, Denmark, Norway, Belgium and the Netherlands—had no health insurance in all or part of the year. In 2001, the number was 38 million. That's a 35 percent increase in a decade when the U.S. population rose only 10 percent. Not only did all the people in those six countries have health coverage, each of their health-care systems were rated better than America's. Bottom line: They cost less, provide more, cover everybody.
Unsurprisingly, one of the main reasons the number of uninsured soared to this record high is because the deep recession that put millions out of a job took their health coverage along with it. Nearly three of five who lost their jobs also wound up uninsured. […]
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On today’s Kagro in the Morning show: Our 3/22/16 show fills in. Greg Dworkin notes the latest stop Trump schemes, the AIPAC auditions vs. the Trumpster fire, and a startling revelation on the genesis of the drug wars. Sanders and superdelegates. And a new bit of ridiculous electoral arcana to ponder.
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