Too many tabs! Time to clear the queue!
The Displaced Plainsman triggers my theocracy alarm by pointing out that Michele Bachmann is a disciple of her Oral Roberts University law professor John Eidsmoe. Oral Roberts University is a voting issue on its own, but Eidsmoe blatantly declares that America was founded as a theocracy and should be restored to that blessed state. Eidsmoe also thinks Jefferson Davis was a better leader than Abraham Lincoln.
Eidsmoe, Bachmann, and other theocrats might drive more folks to secession as they undermine the republic by supporting unfunded trillion-dollar wars and strangling school budgets nationwide. (See? Everything in DP's world fits together!)
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If you must read a conservative blog, read South Dakota Politics. Dr. Blanchard manages to string together a fracas between high court justices in Wisconsin and the U.S. Supreme Court's just and proper defense of the free speech rights of makers of vile video games. If that's too complicated for your gross conservative tastes, see also Dr. Blanchard's obligatory Al Gore bashing.
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Pastor Shel Boese continues his fight to distinguish true evangelicalism from fundamentalism. In so doing, he cites data from a Pew survey of evangelical attitudes on a number of issues. 75% are cool with lady pastors (funny, so am I!). 90% reject the "Prosperity Gospel" (Hallelujah!). 52% say good evangelicals shouldn't drink alcohol.
Says Shel, "Regarding alcohol, I think it's funny that 52 percent of evangelicals think that Jesus would make a lousy one!"
...and that gets me back to wondering what Michele Bachmann has been drinking....
"See? Everything in DP’s world fits together!"
Thanks for the kind words. Now I just need to convince my wife of that point.
Cory, what we have today is an "Occult Theocracy". Read Edith Starr Miller's vast research. The is Occult Theocracy alive in many evangelical circles. Read Matthew 24.
"Eidsmoe also thinks Jefferson Davis was a better leader than Abraham Lincoln."
Don't correlate being on the right side as being a good leader. Some of the worst people in the world were the best leaders and organizers. I would never promote them, but facts are facts.
Then let's try interpretation of the Constitution, which the President swears to defend and about which Eidsmoe and Bachmann purport to be passionate. Lincoln maintained that the Consitution did not permit secession and insurrection. Eidsmoe prefers Davis's interpretation that it does. Which position do you want to hear from your presidential candidate?
I want to hear the truth, period. I'm not a lawyer so I am unable to interpret it correctly. I honestly feel states rights have been eroded for years so topics like these make me wonder if seccesion is a safeguard for states to avoid an over-stepping federal gov't.
And if Michele Bachmann says that, she disqualifies herself from the Presidency.
On what grounds?
Dan,
The president takes an oath to preserve, protect and defend the Constitution. In Texas vs. White the Supreme Court ruled
"The Union of the States never was a purely artificial and [p725] arbitrary relation. It began among the Colonies, and grew out of common origin, mutual sympathies, kindred principles, similar interests, and geographical relations. It was confirmed and strengthened by the necessities of war, and received definite form and character and sanction from the Articles of Confederation. By these, the Union was solemnly declared to "be perpetual." And when these Articles were found to be inadequate to the exigencies of the country, the Constitution was ordained "to form a more perfect Union." It is difficult to convey the idea of indissoluble unity more clearly than by these words. What can be indissoluble if a perpetual Union, made more perfect, is not?"
Later in the decision the Court wrote
"The union between Texas and the other States was as complete, as perpetual, and as indissoluble as the union between the original States. There was no place for reconsideration or revocation, except through revolution or through consent of the States.
"Considered therefore as transactions under the Constitution, the ordinance of secession, adopted by the convention and ratified by a majority of the citizens of Texas, and all the acts of her legislature intended to give effect to that ordinance, were absolutely null. They were utterly without operation in law. The obligations of the State, as a member of the Union, and of every citizen of the State, as a citizen of the United States, remained perfect and unimpaired. It certainly follows that the State did not cease to be a State, nor her citizens to be citizens of the Union."
In short the Supreme Court has decided that states enter the Union under the Constitution and that Union is perpetual. It's logically impossible to "defend the Constitution" as the oath requires and support secession. Hence candidates who support secession should be disqualified.
LK -
You obviously misunderstood me. I said I wanted the truth, and nothing else. I've seen interpretations from all over and trying to interpret it myself without being a lawyer is very tough to do. If secession is allowed, then that's what I want to hear. IF secession is not allowed, then that's what I want to hear. I don't want to hear someone who interpreted it just to fit their ideology. In all honesty, I take them all like a grain of salt.
Also, I in no way would vote for Bachman. I think she is way too extreme. However, when it comes to candidates, I'd like for the reasons to not to vote for them to be legitimate. Discrediting Bachman for her teacher in college is the same as discrediting Obama for his pastor growing up. It's stupid and weak.
How about the fact that she is just a good old fashioned whack job.
1. "I find it interesting that it was back in the 1970s that the swine flu broke out under another, then under another Democrat president, Jimmy Carter. I'm not blaming this on President Obama, I just think it's an interesting coincidence." -Rep. Michele Bachmann, on the 1976 Swine Flu outbreak that happened when Gerald Ford, a Republican, was president, April 28, 2009
2. "There are hundreds and hundreds of scientists, many of them holding Nobel Prizes, who believe in intelligent design." -Rep. Michele Bachmann, Oct. 2006
3. "Carbon dioxide is portrayed as harmful. But there isn't even one study that can be produced that shows that carbon dioxide is a harmful gas." -Rep. Michelle Bachmann, April, 2009
4. "Well what I want them to know is just like, John Wayne was from Waterloo, Iowa. That's the kind of spirit that I have, too" -Rep. Michele Bachmann, getting her John Waynes mixed up during an interview after launching her presidential campaign in Waterloo, Iowa, where she grew up. The beloved movie star John Wayne was born in Winterset, Iowa, three hours away. The John Wayne that Waterloo was home to is John Wayne Gacy, a notorious serial killer. (June 2011)
5. "I wish the American media would take a great look at the views of the people in Congress and find out: Are they pro-America or anti-America?" -Rep. Michelle Bachmann, calling for a new McCarthyism, Oct. 2008
6. "Take this into consideration. If we look at American history, between 1942 and 1947, the data that was collected by the Census Bureau was handed over to the FBI and other organizations at the request of President Roosevelt, and that's how the Japanese were rounded up and put into the internment camps. I'm not saying that that's what the Administration is planning to do, but I am saying that private personal information that was given to the Census Bureau in the 1940s was used against Americans to round them up, in a violation of their constitutional rights, and put the Japanese in internment camps." -Rep. Michele Bachmann, June 2009
7. "If we took away the minimum wage -- if conceivably it was gone -- we could potentially virtually wipe out unemployment completely because we would be able to offer jobs at whatever level." Michele Bachmann, Jan. 2005
8. "During the last 100 days we have seen an orgy. It would make any local smorgasbord embarrassed … The government spent its wad by April 26." -Rep. Michele Bachmann, accusing the Obama administration of premature fiscal ejaculation, May 2009
9. "That's why people need to continue to go to the town halls, continue to melt the phone lines of their liberal members of Congress, and let them know, under no certain circumstances will I give the government control over my body and my health care decisions." -Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-MN), a pro-lifer who completely missed the irony of using the same slogan as the pro-choice movement in arguing against health care reform
10. "Does that mean that someone's 13-year-old daughter could walk into a sex clinic, have a pregnancy test done, be taken away to the local Planned Parenthood abortion clinic, have their abortion, be back and go home on the school bus? That night, mom and dad are never the wiser." -Rep. Michele Bachmann, on health care reform's potential to dupe parents, October 2009
''Unfortunately she is now suffering from breast cancer, so keep her in your prayers. This may be an opportunity for her now to be open to some spiritual things, now that she is suffering with that physical disease. She is a lesbian.''
—Rep. Michele Bachmann, suggesting that gay singer Melissa Etheridge should repent after getting cancer, Nov. 2004
''It is a brand new, billion-dollar high speed train that is going to go from Disneyland up to Las Vegas...Harry Reid, the Senator from Nevada, was behind this measure, and it makes us wonder, is he more interested in making sure kids start gambling at younger ages? ''
—Rep. Michele Bachmann
''I think if we give Glenn Beck the numbers, he can solve this [the national debt].''
—Rep. Michele Bachmann, Feb. 2011
''Normalization (of gayness) through desensitization. Very effective way to do this with a bunch of second graders, is take a picture of 'The Lion King' for instance, and a teacher might say, 'Do you know that the music for this movie was written by a gay man?' The message is: I'm better at what I do, because I'm gay.''
—Michele Bachmann, November 2004
You're absolutely correct, Shane. Michele Bachmann scrapes the bottom of the blackened teapot. What a milf (Bill Maher's word, not mine; intended meaning: 'mother I'd love to forget'). I rue the day a fundamentalist evangelical becomes the presidential candidate for the party of the rich. That has some form of fascism writ all over it.