Today is Constitution Day. On this day in 1787 the United States Constitution was signed into law by the founders of our nation. The United States became a country ruled by laws and not the whim of its leaders. The document provided a framework for guaranteeing basic human rights, justice and freedom. The Constitution of the United States sets our nation apart from the dictatorships and evil regimes, and should be cherished.
Lots more, yep --
The Bush administration has done everything in its power to undermine the document, 221 years of the rule of law and the basic tenets of civil liberties. The ACLU marked the anniversary by enumerating the ways the criminals in the White House have degraded the most important legal document in American history, if not in the history of Western civilization. On over incarceration:
Packed, heaving prisons that buckle under the weight of mass incarceration have made prisoners victims of significant and frequent Eighth Amendment violations. Many prisoners wait for dangerous periods of time before getting medical attention. At Ely State Prison in Nevada, a diabetic man died when his body rotted with gangrene after prison medical staff stopped giving him insulin. At the Maricopa County jail in Phoenix, Arizona, a prisoner experienced severe groin and stomach pain and was given fluids, Tylenol and a laxative rather than a medical examination. The next day he was found dead in his cell from an ulcer.
Such horror stories are common place in today's society, a society in which incarceration has become a big business. The business of imprisonment will be a huge black asterisk in the books when scholars look back on this period of United States history. Mandatory minimum drug sentences and lengthening prison terms for relatively minor offenses have exacerbated the situation, or made it far more lucrative depending on how one looks at it. Innocent people have been executed, and many convicted of flimsy evidence who may very well be innocent are also in line to be executed. The administration knows no shame when it comes to violating the rule of law, and has no respect for human life. That shamelessness trickled down to the common folk, even as prosperity failed to trickle.
The First Amendment has fallen victim to the Republican SCOTUS as well. Take the case of the Juneau, Alaska student who was punished for exercising his right to free speech (not so shocking considering Alaska produced Mooselini). It all boiled down to his use of a term many people associate with drugs. Free speech that's not free:
In Morse v. Frederick the Court ruled that a student’s speech could be censored at a school-related event (even outside the school), not because it was disruptive or because it provoked imminent lawlessness, but because it contained the word "bong." The Court drew on other drug-related precedent to find that when it comes to students in the school context (and even students who are near a school, as in this case), the government can make exceptions to free speech rights when it comes to speech about drugs.
The selective application of the rule of law has become endemic to the government the Bush administration forced upon the American people. Just as Bush and Cheney don't believe the law applies to them in any way, they also do not believe freedoms as guaranteed by the Constitution apply to everyone (just the people they allow it to apply to).
The Sixth Amendment right to counsel has not been suspended so much as it has become a de facto casualty of today's political mindset. Only one thing needed to be done to break the Sixth Amendment into meaningless shards: nothing. If nobody in power cares enough to relegate funding to provide counsel, then the Sixth Amendment doesn't exist as a real defense against prosecution. Counsel must be appointed, but attorneys willing to work for peanuts are often not very adept at defending their clients. Even excellent public defenders are swamped with cases because the funding doesn't provide the manpower necessary to adequately represent all defendants. These offenses against the Constitution are most egregious in capitol cases, where the defendant has the most to lose. The ACLU:
Unfortunately, the Sixth Amendment’s promise of counsel for all, including the poor, often remains unfulfilled in capital cases. The Supreme Court has affirmed that this right includes the right to an effective lawyer, but all too often, defense attorneys involved in capital cases prove inept, ineffectual, underfunded, and overmatched by the State’s attorneys. Some of these attorneys have even been drunk or asleep at trial.
Courts overturn death sentences on a weekly basis. An extraordinary number of these reversals are granted because the death sentence was a result of egregiously incompetent defense lawyering. In fact, studies show that nearly 70 percent of death sentences are overturned during the appellate process, and a large proportion of these reversals are due to a finding that the condemned received poor and ineffective representation at trial.
Certainly cases involving the death penalty best demonstrate the damage to the Sixth Amendment, but in lesser cases the defendants still suffer because of it. An innocent man who loses ten years of his life because of inadequate representation would probably not be consoled that the failure of the Sixth Amendment in his case wasn't as bad as it could have been.
The FISA fiasco in July tragically demonstrated the depth of the deterioration of respect for the Constitution of the United States. McJoan, and so many other writers appalled by Democratic support for retroactive immunity for the telecom companies, brilliantly expressed concerns felt by so many people on the subject. The issue wasn't all about suing telecommunications corporations. The real insult involved Congress sweeping violations of Constitutional law under the rug. The law was broken, and then amendments were passed effectively declaring that breaking the law was no big deal. At the time the story of "four legs good, two legs bad" came to mind. The pigs came in the night and changed everything. Afterwards two legs were good and four legs were bad. The people impacted by the changes to the rule of law were absolutely ignored, all of their concerns muffled by the giant hand of condescending authoritarianism.
Today is Constitution Day. The ACLU asks that anybody who cares make a simple pledge. The pledge:
- I believe that no one—including the President—is above the law.
- I oppose all forms of torture, and I support both closing the Guantánamo Bay prison and ending indefinite detention.
- I oppose warrantless spying.
- I believe that government officials, no matter how high-ranking, should be held accountable for breaking the law and violating the Constitution.
- I believe that the Constitution protects every person's rights equally—no matter what they believe, how they live, where or if they worship, and whom they love.
- I reject the notion that we have to tolerate violations of our most fundamental rights in the name of fighting terrorism.
- I am deeply committed to the Constitution and expect our country's leaders to share and act on that commitment—every day, without fail.
For those of you who cherish the idea of a nation ruled by law instead of whim, governed justly instead of arbitrarily, this pledge probably means a lot. I believe there is still hope for our nation as we speak. The less people care the more uncertain our future becomes. The more violations of the law are ignored or excused, the more our historical legacy is in peril. At the very least we should all take the time to think about how lucky we were to have the Constitution in the first place. For those of us who passionately defend the rule of law, the very least just won't do. I would die for our Constitution and our freedoms, and I will do so if I am ever asked to.
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Palin's Acceptance Speech
The other, far more disturbing part of that passage deals with the writer she quoted. The writer was none other than Westbrook Pegler. Most people don't know who Pegler was these days, but in his own time he was a very powerful right-wing columnist who worked for Randolph William Hearst. Pegler once spewed some very venomous comments about Bobby Kennedy. In the words of Kennedy's son, Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.:
Fascist writer Westbrook Pegler, an avowed racist who Sarah Palin approvingly quoted in her acceptance speech for the moral superiority of small town values, expressed his fervent hope about my father, Robert F. Kennedy, as he contemplated his own run for the presidency in 1965, that "some white patriot of the Southern tier will spatter his spoonful of brains in public premises before the snow flies."
It might be worth asking Governor Palin for a tally of the other favorites from her reading list.
Sarah Palin continues come across as the most dangerous woman alive today. I don't believe she's stupid for a second. She strikes me as the type of person who could easily get away with murder, because everybody believes she is ignorant. I think she has the cunning of a Renaissance courtier coupled with the bite and venom of a cobra.
Yglesias provided an interesting chart that debunked the idea that criticizing Sarah Palin could do anything but help our desire to elect Barack Obama.
In grade school nobody often nobody raised their hands until they knew everyone else would. My trashing of Sarah Palin is my way of raising my hand to say, "Yes, she sucks. She's not good for our nation. She's not good for women's rights. She's the pits on separation of church and state. She has a dangerous religious philosophy, and we don't want her.
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Lee Rodgers
Hate jockey Lee Rodgers of San Francisco's KSFO radio station:
Look at these ugly skanks, who make up the female leadership of the Democratic Party. I mean, my God -- you know, guys sitting around, talking, perhaps in a bar someplace -- they have a way of scoring them. ... I know, it's sexist. It's sexist. It's unfair, and all of that, but they will look over a female who comes in and just make an announcement: How many drinks it would take before you'd jump her bones, you know. You look at most of the headline women of the Democratic Party, you're thinking, 'It's gotta be closing time and five drinks, and maybe not even then.' And that's what they're really PO'd about. Sarah Palin's good-looking and they hate that.
I hate to break it to Lee "Shithead" Rodgers, but what makes him think the beautiful, intelligent women who abound in the Democratic Party would touch him with a ten foot pole? Rodgers doesn't stop insulting a large percentage of American women just because he ran out of things to say about their looks. He went on to insult them with a totally baseless claim that all Democratic women are baby killers. He said:
Democrat women, admit it: You're nothing but a bunch of phonies. And I think we have to ask: Would you like Sarah Palin better if she got pregnant again and did have an abortion, because it's obvious, with a lot of liberal women, killing babies is the main priority they have. They can BS their way around it all they want, but bottom line: That's it. It's clear. It's obvious.
What's obvious to me is that Rodgers mother has joined the ranks of women who would have done the world a great service if <span style="font-style: italic;">she had aborted him</span>. It is too late now, but some satisfaction can be found in the suggestion. Lee Rodgers would be right at home with aborted fetuses, primarily because his entire ideology is a bloody, dripping abortion broadcast over the airwaves.
Hatred requires no rational thought, as radio hatemongers such as Rodgers, Michael Savage, Rush Limbaugh, Michael Reagan, and others, have demonstrated time and time again. Savage thinks autistic kids are faking it, and should be beaten until they aren't autistic anymore. Rush Limbaugh lights cigars with hundred dollar bills he earned byinciting violence against peaceful, innocent victims. Michael Reagan called for the assassination of 9/11 activist Mike Dice during one of his radio shows, and another time for hanging Howard Dean.
I openly invite psychotic Republican hatemongers to come down from their ivory towers and walk the streets once a day. It would be good for them to have a first hand grasp of what violence means. Maybe if they understood what it means to get the crap beat out of them they would stop advocating it for others. If they need directions to locations where they could get into a good scuffle, then I can easily help them. All they need to do is go to a local neighborhood that looks very poor wearing their normal $2000 suits.
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The Feminist Rush Limbaugh
Ever the vigilant defender of women's rights, Rush Limbaugh trashed sexism in Alaska
LIMBAUGH: I'll tell you what this Troopergate's all about. I'm going to tell you exactly what it's all about. It's about the good ol' boys of Alaska being upset that a woman had upset the apple cart, got rid of Murkowski, got rid of the other Republican opponent in the primary. This is all about the good ol' boys of Alaska saying, "We're not going to sit here and be run by a damn woman. We're going to take care of it. We're going to take this woman -- " That's all this is. And of course this guy's working with -- doesn't matter.
When the boys don't like the girl, Democrat and Republican boys will line up, and then they'll fight each other later after they get rid of the girl. And that's exactly what is happening here. This is pure sexism in Alaska on the part of these old boys trying to get rid of Sarah Palin, and she didn't put up with it, and she didn't bend over and let them have their way.
Everybody knows how much Rush Limbaugh cares about women's issues. It's touching to see his genuine concerns over Sarah Palin's manhandling by the politicians in her home state. Limbaugh must be alarmed that men aren't the only lawmakers in Alaska seeking to bend Palin over at the waist, as he so succinctly put it. Senate President Lyda Green stands proudly with the other sexist Alaskan legislators who want Sarah to relax and enjoy it. Limbaugh will not find anything contradictory about Green's desire to investigate Palin, because as Rush has put it so many times in the past, sexual deviants don't count as normal human beings (and a female Senate President defines deviant in Limbaugh's vocabulary). Here's Rush Limbaugh discussing transgender operations:
We have affectionately named a female-to-male sex-change operation the "add-a-dick-to-me," and we have news about "add-a-dick-to-mes" today...
I realize that many of you are just hanging out there – well, that's a bad choice of words. Some of you -- well, it fits. Some of you people hanging out there to the edge of your chairs waiting to hear the latest news on the "add-a-dick-to-me" research that has been done. I want to do this before we get back to our audio soundbites with Mrs. Clinton. (laughs)
Most people -- this is Reuters Health, ladies and gentlemen -- most people who undergo male-to-female sex change surgeries are satisfied. This we call the "chop-a-dick-off-a-me," by the way. Most people who undergo the "chop-a-dick-off-a-me" are satisfied with the results, this according to a follow-up study of patients treated at one of the UK practice over a 10-year period. Dr. Jonathan C. Goddard and colleagues, University Hospitals of Leicester, reviewed the cases of 222 individuals who had undergone the procedure, known medically as feminizing genitoplasty. But that's such a long word, it's so confusing, we have come up with our own terminology for this.
At the first outpatient visit after the surgery, 88 percent said they were happy when they became babes. Seven percent said they were unhappy. Now, among patients who had undergone the "add-a-dick-to-me" procedure, they said that it’s too sensitive and they needed to have the surgery again because it was just uncomfortable. It was much, much less satisfying to go the "add-a-dick-to-me" route.
[Insert Snark here:] Anybody can see how that Rush Limbaugh champions the causes of the downtrodden. Women, homosexuals and transgender individuals all admire Limbaugh for how articulately he defends their rights and civil liberties. It should come as no surprise that Rush won't allow the Good Old "Boys" in Alaska to run roughshod over Sarah Palin and her holy mission to transform Alaska into a place where she, above all other people, will be happy.
Limbaugh has long been against people who bend over and take it. On June 23 he railed against Democrats for bending over and allowing gays and African Americans to have their way. Limbaugh even took Republicans to task on July 14 for reaching out to the NAACP, referring to it as bending over and taking it from Colored People.
[Insert Snark Here:] I totally support Limbaugh in all his completely justified rants about bending over and taking it, but the repetition does beg one question. Why is Rush Limbaugh so infatuated with bending over and taking it? Being a concerned fan and absolute dittohead I must wonder, did something happen to Rush while he was on Oxy? Are all of these tirades against sexuality and bending over the result of PTSD from a drug deal gone bad in South Beach? If only we could talk him into describing the experience, then Limbaugh could begin the healing process and rejoin polite society. All of his nightmares of sexual subservience could become a thing of the past, but first he needs to admit to the trauma.
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Pot Calls Kettle Black
Lynn Forester de Rothschild, a member of the Democratic National Committee's Platform Committee, announced to CNN yesterday that she will be supporting John McCain. One of the reasons she cited was her belief that Barack Obama is an elitist. In an interview with CNN's Joe Johns Lynn said, "I feel like he is an elitist. I feel like he has not given me reason to trust him."
Lynn is a member of The Rothschild family, not some imitation family that lives in a trailer park in Stillwater, Oklahoma.
Forester is the CEO of EL Rothschild, a holding company with businesses around the world. She is married to international banker Sir Evelyn de Rothschild. Forester is a member of the DNC’s Democrats Abroad chapter and splits her time living in London and New York.
The real reason she will be supporting John McCain has nothing to do with an imaginary perception of Obama's elitism on her part. The McCain tax plan gives people like the Rothschild's a large tax cut, and they would continue to make out like robber barons during a 3rd consecutive GOP administration. Barack Obama, as has been noted by concerned politically aware poor people in the United States, wants to force the wealthy to give back to the country they have been fleecing for so long.
Who's the real elitist here? What a freaking joke... an ultrawealthy member of an old money banking family calls a black man an elitist. Idiots across America could be heard humming the theme song to "Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous." The water is filled with chum, and the rich sharks are cruising for din-din ,desperate not to pay their fair share of taxes.
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Neopentacostal Dominionist: 3rd Wave
[dogemperor's presentations condensed and simplified for my own blog]
Assemblies of God churches gave birth to several extreme Dominionist organizations, one of the larger of which is "Joel's Army." Most normal Americans won't have any idea what they means, but Sarah Palin does. For my part I ventured some guesses before I actually did some digging into the concrete definition. I imagined a religious world view based on severe, uncompromising Christian fundamentalism, and that guess was correct. I could even guess some of the details of what that means. As dangerous as I imagined the movement must be, it's actually far worse than I could ever have guessed. From a report by the Southern Poverty Law Center:
"An end-time army has one common purpose — to aggressively take ground for the kingdom of God under the authority of Jesus Christ, the Dread Champion," Bentley declares on the website for his ministry school in British Columbia, Canada. "The trumpet is sounding, calling on-fire, revolutionary believers to enlist in Joel's Army. ... Many are now ready to be mobilized to establish and advance God's kingdom on earth."
Joel's Army followers, many of them teenagers and young adults who believe they're members of the final generation to come of age before the end of the world, are breaking away in droves from mainline Pentecostal churches. Numbering in the tens of thousands, they base their beliefs on an esoteric reading of the second chapter of the Old Testament Book of Joel, in which an avenging swarm of locusts attacks Israel. In their view, the locusts are a metaphor for Joel's Army.
Despite their overt militancy, there's no evidence Joel's Army followers have committed any acts of violence. But critics warn that actual bloodletting may only be a matter of time for a movement that casts itself as God's avenging army.
That's just one part of the background of the Neopentecostal, or Third Wave Pentecostal movement. The organizations tend to advocate the use of force, not domestically but internationally, to expand the role of Christianity in the world. Individual members of the Dominionist congregations don't come across as dangerous or unhinged, because they are Christians after all. They call for preparations for the end of days with smiles on their faces and offers of hot chocolate. Their churches wouldn't have any members if they accosted everyone who had different beliefs. Instead they are very sweet and manipulative so that the ranks of Joel's Army will grow.
The religion is permeated by the idea that the Rapture and Jesus' second coming rapidly approaches. The pastor at Juneau Christian Center, one of the churches Sarah Palinhas attended, often discussed the end times. Excerpts from Pastor Mike Rose's sermons at JCC:
Do you believe we’re in the last days? After listening to Newt Gingrich and the prime minister of Israel and a number of others at our gathering, I became convinced, and I have been convinced for some time. We are living in the last days. These are incredible times to live in.
God will not be mocked. I don’t care what the ACLU says. God will not be mocked. I don’t care what atheists say. God will not be mocked. I don’t care what’s going on in the nation today with so much horrific rebellion and sin and things that take place. God will not be mocked. Judgment Day is coming. Where do you stand?
If one's answer does not include the phrase "with Joel's Army" or "with the Third Wave," then one would do well not to speak out in their churches. No violence has been reported yet, but then this religion has been neatly cloistered from the public. Confrontations with nonbelievers have been practically non-existent so there really is no basis to judge how dangerous the congregations really are. Should Palin become the Vice President that situation would change drastically, because she carries the torch for their causes. Confrontations would become inevitable if the Vice President of this nation forced Neopentecostal beliefs out into the open and called it progress.
Members of the New Wave, as Neopentecostal leaders call it, practice their faith with melodramatic weeping, laughing and thrashing about on the floor. Gone are the calm days when speaking in tongues was considered the most holy religious manifestation. To the Dominionists of Joel's Army speaking in tongues is like the first scene of a three act religious nutjob extravaganza. Andrew Evans wrote a guide to establishing an atmosphere conducive to the theatric worship. Excerpt:
- Do not seek to develop a ministry of manifestations out of what is a move of the Holy Spirit.
- Create an atmosphere of faith, by giving opportunity for the Spirit to move. Rule out any manifestations of the flesh.
- Be careful to maintain the focus on God himself and don't transfer people's faith to a man, place or a method.
- Continue in both the Word and the Spirit and don't be caught in the trap of alternating between the two.
- The best setting for people to receive from God is for them to come before him in the way the Scripture entreats us: 'Enter in his gates with thanksgiving and into his courts with praise.' Testimonies can also prove an encouragement to others to respond to the Lord.
- Remind people that Jesus invites us to come and drink, promising not only to quench our thirst, but also to release rivers of living water to flow out from us to others.
- When people fall over, be open to keep praying for them. Encourage them to stay down and continue to receive from God. It is not unusual for people to stay down for several hours.
- Have capable people available to catch those falling over. This removes the fear of falling and also avoids unnecessary collisions.
- There is no need to cause people to fall to the floor by forcing them. The Holy Spirit is perfectly able to overwhelm people without your effort.
- Allow God time to work with people. If some are not ready to respond, simply encourage them to remain open and in prayer to God. Return again to them when you have prayed for others.
- Instruct the people while God is moving. Explain any unusual manifestations and try to settle unnecessary fears by giving understanding about what God is doing.
- Deal with any carnal behaviour and do not allow it to hijack what God is doing. Take advantage of the opportunity that this can present to instruct people more fully on how to respond to God.
- Be open yourself, as it should be a time of refreshing for you too.
Don't Miss This Hour of Visitation!
Evans, a guru of the Neopentecostal movement, warns against allowing carnal behavior during the service. That begs the question of whether the movement appeals to the base sexual urges prospective members in order to increase their membership. The use of sexual tension to advance religious doctrines could hardly be described as new. Catholicism especially uses guilt over sexuality to reign in members of the community. The Third Wave movement has almost nothing in common with Catholicism, there does seem to be a subtle encouragement of sexual desire, and subsequent denial or penance, primarily to advance the tenets of the church.
My words would be considered heretical, and surely I would be judged as in danger of suffering eternal torment, but I see this too clearly to back down. The church lures in young members with sexy, new active worship. Good looking girls and guys rolling around on the floor for Jesus could appeal to many a lonely heart. Once hooked on the sense of community members take pleasure in the loosing of their Christian inhibitions. Between animated and emotional "manifestations" the members are bombarded with sermons about the armageddon and America's duty to advance Dominionist Christianity on a global scale.
The purpose of this post isn't to discuss the Dominionist Neopentecostal movement, however. This post is all about misguided America's beloved hockey mom, or, as I call her, the most dangerous woman in the world. She will keep these beliefs a secret. Nobody would expect her to give a speech supporting Joel's Army, because that would be like severing her own Achilles tendon. Examining some of her core religious memberships will leave little room for doubt she is a true believer of the Third Wave.
Sarah Palin is a member of Feminists For Life, an organization very much against feminism. Dogemperor explains:
FFL in fact engages in "cultural appropriation" of women's suffrage icons to promote a very woman-unfriendly agenda that--despite attempts to sound "not like those crazies in Operation Rescue"--would not only criminalise abortion but the IUD and hormonal birth control methods, and potentially everything outside the rhythm method (the term "abortifacient birth control" is a codephrase in the dominionist "pro-life" community for hormonal birth control--partly due to a unique urban legend claiming "the pill" and other hormonal birth control causes abortion and partly because of a unique definition of pregnancy beginning at conception rather than at implantation (the latter is what most mainstream OB/GYNs use) and thus making anything preventing implantation potentially "abortifacient").
Women in Alaska already knew a whole lot about Palin's fascistic anti-feminist beliefs. She has been advocating the "baby factory" idea for her entire short political career. The anti-Palin rally in Anchorage this week originated with Sarah's desire to subjugate the women of this nation once again, and roll back all progress on women's rights.
Palin was head of the local Fellowship for Christian Athletes in Wasilla. FCA does refer to the Christian organization in the lower 48 states. The FCA, thought harmless by so many well intentioned moms and pops, engages in coercive religious practices to increase membership, especially the Alaskan FCA. They infiltrate local schools under false pretenses, such as wellness discussions or anti-drug lectures. Then they unveil the true agenda, which is to gain members for the local Neopentecostal movement. Any students who express discomofrt or misgivings about the religious nature of those meetings are ostracized and made examples of. This practice violates the core essence of the separation between church and state.
The ACLU has fought the FCA (.pdf) since the '60's. The FCA especially ostracizes Jewish people. The FCA, so long considered harmless, has changed, and is now funded by Dominionist groups, and acts in conjunction with other Dominionist youth groups. The entire process is designed to build members of a militaristically oriented religious movement, one willing to fight the entire world to establish their brand of Christianity everywhere. All of this behavior uses the approach of the apocalypse as the justification for the methodology employed.
The last bit of freakish information on Sarah Palin's horrendously right wing religious agenda involves wealthy Evangelist Bill Gothard. She worked to have Wasilla named a "a community of character" under the IACC, the International Association of Character Cities. The group is one of dozens of front groups run by Gothard's parent organization, and is an incredibly coercive member of Joel's Army. Gothard runs training camps to prepare God's Warriors for the coming of tribulations. Be very concerned:
Gothard operates what appears to be a paramilitary-like training school for teenagers on a 2,200-acre former college campus in Big Sandy, Texas, as part of his ALERT program (Air Land Emergency Resource Team) -- purportedly for domestic missions work via the providing of disaster relief and humanitarian aid (see second paragraph of Endnote #9). Gothard states that "ALERT is an intensive program in which young men [male graduates of ATI] ages sixteen and older are trained in Biblical principles, Godly character, and practical skills. ALERT utilizes military disciplines to train young men to restore life, rather than take it, and to bring peace and encouragement to those in distress. The present program involves the following phases: (1) Discipline: in physical strength, endurance, and self-control; (2) Skills: in a wide range of vocational specialties; and (3) Emergency Services: in response to calls from cities, states, and nations." (Source: IBLP Internet web site, 8/97.) As of July, 2000, the program had 181 enrolled and 600 graduates.
Since the hyper-spiritual warfare motifs of the Latter Rain movement are beginning to take a sinister shift towards actual military, Gothard's involvement in paramilitary-like things causes us to wonder if there is a connection. Don't forget that Joel's Army has a "chosen seed" (the coming generation) to carry out its purpose on earth, which is dominion (both physical and spiritual). In this context, Christians should have some grave concerns about Gothard's activities.
Sarah Palin... our newest most dangerous person in the world, pupil of Gothard and advocate of the apocalypse.
{{{End Transmission}}}