|
The Voice of the White House
Washington,
D.C., November 9, 2006: “ My
brother-in-law is a professional military officer, stationed in the
Washington area and from him I learned over lunch today that Israel
has finally determined to launch what they consider to be a
preemptive military strike against Iran’s capacity to manufacture
and, most especially, to deliver an atomic weapon against Israel.
I was told that Israel is
desolated by the neutering of Bush’s ability to support this
attack.
Congress is now seen as a
block to Bush’s militant plans and so the decision is being
formulated not only in Tel Aviv but also in Washington to
“materially assist” an Israeli attack with satellite
intelligence, very sophisticated weaponry and high level
intelligence sharing.
American troops are not to
be involved but Bush and Cheney are planning to do everything
possible to “actively support” this action.
This sort of story has been
circulating around the corridors of power here for years but now, I
am firmly assured, it appears to be reality. Israel attacked once
before on this sort of provocation and is now going to do it again.
We have agreed to supply certain tactical nuclear rocketry capable
of being launched from aircraft that have a miniature atomic
warhead, capable of extensive localized damage.
Since Israel is in no
position to launch a ground invasion, the aim is to so disrupt both
the government in Tehran and the suspected areas where any possible
missiles could be launched against Tel Aviv in the possibility of an
Iranian attack against Israel when a fanatic supporter of Israeli
ambitions like Bush is not in office.
In spite of his loss of
Congressional power, Bush can still back such a move and nothing
Congress can do could stop him.
Bush is livid with rage
with the outcome of the midterms. He had to fire Rumsfeld and is
desperate to pass the wiretap bill that would keep him from any
legal problems. He also wants the odious bully, Bolton, to stay on
as UN Ambassador but it is very doubtful if he can achieve either
goal.
Whatever else he might be,
Bush is petty, mean and terribly vindictive so his gleeful support
of an Israeli hit is entirely within the scope of his bitter and
vengeful personality.
Since the U.S. is not
technically involved (weapons shipments to Israel would be
classified as Top Secret and any information them would not be
available to a hostile Congress) he sees a chance to give the finger
to anyone and everyone who has challenged his fragile manhood.
The only riposte to this
would be if Iran struck first. If they did, one would hope they
nuked Tel Aviv and not Jerusalem. There are too many historical and
valuable buildings in the latter and a fried Knesset would
materially benefit the
rest of the world.
Israel
official: Strike on Iran possible
November 10, 2006
by Amy Teibel
AP
JERUSALEM – The deputy defense
minister suggested Friday that Israel
might be forced to launch a military strike against Iran's
disputed nuclear program — the clearest statement yet of such a
possibility from a high-ranking official.
"I
am not advocating an Israeli pre-emptive military action against
Iran and I am aware of its possible repercussions," Deputy
Defense Minister Ephraim Sneh, a former general, said in comments
published Friday in The Jerusalem Post. "I consider it a last
resort. But even the last resort is sometimes the only resort."
Sneh's
comments did not necessarily reflect the view of Israel's government
or of Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, said government spokeswoman Miri
Eisin.
Olmert,
who was arriving in Washington on Sunday, said he was confident in
the U.S. handling of the international standoff over Iran's nuclear
program. The Bush administration and other nations say is a cover
for developing atomic weapons, but Tehran says the program is
peaceful.
"I have enormous respect for President
Bush.
He is absolutely committed," Olmert said in an interview on
NBC's "Today" show. "I know that America will not
allow Iran to possess nuclear weapons because this is a danger to
the whole Western world."
The
United States and its European allies have proposed a raft of
sanctions to try to curb the country's nuclear development.
Israel
sees Iran as the greatest threat to its survival. Hard-line Iranian
President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has called for Israel's destruction,
and Israelis do not believe his claims that Iran's nuclear program
is meant to develop energy, not arms.
Israel cripple Iraq's
atomic program 25 years ago with an airstrike on its unfinished
nuclear reactor. Experts say Iran has learned from Iraq's mistakes,
scattering its nuclear facilities and building some underground.
Sneh's
tough talk is the boldest to date by a high-ranking Israeli
official. Olmert and other Israeli leaders frequently discuss the
Iranian threat in grave terms, but stop short of threatening
military action.
Years
of diplomacy have failed to persuade Iran to modify its nuclear
program so it can't develop weapons.
Palestinians: Israel's Gaza strike kills
18
Tank fire killed
civilians, officials say; Israeli says military investigating
November
8, 2006
AP
GAZA
- Israeli tank shells crashed into a residential neighborhood,
killing at least 18 people, including eight children, in their sleep
early Wednesday, Palestinian witnesses and officials said.
Palestinian
Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh said efforts to form a national unity
government were suspended because of the attack. Israeli Defense
Minister Amir Peretz ordered the army to halt artillery attacks in
Gaza.
But
a government spokesman said Israel will continue its operations in
Gaza aimed at halting Palestinian rocket attacks.
Spokeswoman
Miri Eisin said the army is still investigating Wednesday
morning’s deadly incident, and that Israel will take full
responsibility if mistakes were made.
But,
she said: “The Israeli operation throughout the Gaza Strip will
continue as long as Qassam rockets land in Israel, as long as the
smuggling of weapons into the Gaza Strip continues, as long as the
Hamas government chooses for the Palestinians in the Gaza Strip to
continuously provoke Israel.”
Palestinian
security officials said that five tank shells landed in the area
near the town of Beit Hanoun within 15 minutes. Most the casualties
were in a row of homes belonging to members of the Alathamna
extended family, officials said.
Khaled
Radi, a health ministry official, said 13 of the 18 dead belonged to
the family. He said at least 40 more people, all civilians, were
wounded.
Four
Gaza hospitals were treating the casualties.
Rocket attackers targeted
The
attack came after Israeli forces ended a weeklong offensive Tuesday
aimed at halting rocket attacks from this northern Gaza town,
leaving behind wrecked homes, uprooted trees and sewage-covered
streets. But hours after the pullback, the Palestinian rocket fire
resumed.
Israel
kept up its onslaught from outside Beit Hanoun, killing at least 15
Palestinians in airstrikes, gunfire and tank shelling before the
tank attack killed 18, Palestinian officials said.
Haniyeh’s
Hamas movement had been in talks with moderate Palestinian President
Mahmoud Abbas to form a coalition government in a bid to get
international economic sanctions lifted.
Haniyeh
made the announcement that they had been called off at an emergency
meeting of his Cabinet.
“In
a protest of this awful massacre, the prime minister’s office is
announcing the suspension of discussions to form a national unity
government,” Haniyeh said.
Abbas
strongly condemned the attack.
“This
is a horrible, ugly massacre committed by the occupation against our
children, our women and elderly in Beit Hanoun,” he said in a
statement. “We urge and call the security council to convene
immediately to stop the massacres committed against our people and
to uphold their responsibility to stop these massacres.”
The
Israeli army said its preliminary investigation indicated it had
fired from a far away toward the area that was struck. The army said
it was targeting areas where rockets had been fired in recent days
at the Israeli cities of Sderot and Ashkelon.
However,
the army would not yet confirm or deny whether it had struck the
civilians, saying further investigation was necessary.
Hamas warns of suicide bombings
The
Hamas-led Palestinian cabinet convened for an emergency meeting.
Hamas spokesman Ghazi Hamad called for Israel to be expelled from
the United Nations, saying it was an “animal, brutal state.”
In
a huge demonstration outside the morgue at the Kamal Adwan hospital
in the northern Gaza Strip, thousands called for revenge.
“We
are going to fight against the so-called Israel. We are going to
launch our rockets, our martyrs are going to sacrifice their lives
in the depths of our occupied land,” said Nizar Rayan, a Hamas
leader in northern Gaza. “They will strike in Jaffa, in Haifa,
inside Ashdod. The battle will continue. The rifle is not going to
be set down. All of us are martyrs in waiting.
Revenge
is coming.”
The
militant group Islamic Jihad also called for revenge.
“Martyrdom
is coming,” it said in a statement, referring to suicide bombings.
“The response will not take long, because the time is ready for
punishment, and the time is ready for revenge.”
Thousands
gathered outside hospitals weeping as the bodies arrived. Witnesses
said that many of the dead arrived in their sleeping clothes.
Schoolchildren swept out to the street to protest the attack as
mosques broadcast angry speeches on the street.
Dozens
of schoolchildren threw stones and bottles and tried to storm an
empty European Union mission building in Gaza City, according to
witnesses. Palestinian security is trying to prevent them from
entering the building.
Rahwi
Hamad, 75, said he was awoken by the sound of explosions at about
5:15 a.m. and emerged from his home to find body parts and pools of
blood in the streets.
“I
saw people coming out of the house, bleeding and screaming. I
carried a girl covered with blood,” he said. “Inside the houses,
we evacuated dismembered bodies ... Everything was disgusting. this
is the worst, bloody scene I have ever scene.”
©
2006 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may
not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
Stunning Religious Revelations
The Constantine Document: Publishing The Only Contemporary Account of
Jesus’ Life
November 9, 2006
by Brian Harring
Very recently, a most fascinating
manuscript appeared, and has been shopped around to various
publishing companies and other outlets, entitled ‘Jesus and the
Constantine Documents’ by Reinaar Thorvaldsen, DD, PhD and
Guidobaldo Calcanti, PhD.
This work concerns the translation of a
First Century document obtained by Helena, the mother of the
Byzantine Emperor, Constantine I, during a visit to the Holy Land in
326-328. She brought back with her to Constantinople what were then
considered as fragments of the true cross and a scroll containing
the only known contemporary (c. 50 AD) description of
Jesus which covered his origins and activities in Judea.
Because of her discoveries, Helena
became a saint in the Eastern Orthodox and Roman Catholic Churches.
Her feast day in the eastern church is
May 21st and in the western church
August 18th .
Constantine had the scroll sealed in a
gold box covered with various enameled Byzantine religious figures
such as a dove.
Byzantine
gold and silversmithing, enamel-work, jewellery and textiles were
the equal of anything done in ancient times. In mosaics and
icon-painting they developed major and original art forms of their
own. In architecture they achieved masterpieces such as Hagia
Sophia, a building of superior scale and magnificence to
anything in the ancient world
The
gold casket remained in the treasury at Constantinople until May 29,
1453, when the city fell to the troops of the Ottoman Empire
under Sultan Mehmed
II. It was taken at that time by one Ciriaco
de Pizzicoli, also known as Ciriaco of Ancona,
traveller and collector of antiquities, who had accompanied
Mehmed’s soldiers and was attendant at the sack of Constantinople.
It
went to Italy and was subsequently taken into the treasury of the
Duomo in Milan in northern Italy , remaining there until Napoleon made Milan the capital of his Cisalpine
Republic in 1797 and his Italian Republic five years later. The
Milanese Duomo hosted his coronation as King of Italy in 1805.
1796
Milan's
most outstanding museum, Brera is recognized as one of the major art
collections in the world. It was initially founded by the Hapsburgs
in the late 18th century, as a small collection of paintings,
sculptures and plaster copies to be used by the Accademia's student
body.
Its
patrimony came from churches and the estates of Catholic clerical
orders that had been suppressed not long before (the building which
housed the Accademia had formerly been the Milanese headquarters of
the Jesuit order).
The
art collection was dramatically enlarged during the Napoleonic era
between 1799-1815, when it received an extraordinary number of art
works confiscated from all over the North of Italy. This was a
direct consequence of Napoleon's policy towards the city. In
Napoleon's view, Milan was destined to become a capital, albeit
subject to Paris, and therefore needed to consolidate a conspicuous
art collection of its own. Literally thousands of paintings were
therefore indiscriminately confiscated from churches and private
collections in all of the French-occupied Northern-Italian regions:
Lombardy, Veneto (and of course Venice), a large chunk of Emilia
Romagna and the Marche. In 1809 the great new museum opened its
doors to the public.
The
so-called Casket of Constantine eventually ended up at the Louvre in
Paris where Napoleon sent most of his looted art..
No one had ever opened it and it was only a small item in an
immense warehouse of art from all over Europe that Napoleon amassed
for the glory of France and himself.
Following
the German invasion and occupation of Paris in 1940, it vanished
from the Paris museum, allegedly stolen by German art historians
working for the Einsatzstab Rosenberg, a German agency
that gathered a vast trove of art intended for Hitler’s
Linz museum project.
At
some point, early in the 1990s, with the liquidation of a Swiss art
collection, it surfaced again and this time, the casket, which
obviously had something sealed inside, was carefully opened and the
scroll removed for evaluation and study by scholars and technical
experts.
The
scroll, written on papyrus in ink, was carefully unrolled,
photographed and subjected to in-depth forensic studies. These
indicated that the scroll was dated to between 45-55 AD by
a number of experts, using the same techniques that earlier had
proven the so-called Shroud of Turin to be a 13th
Century production. The writing was in Hebrew
or Syro-Chaldaic, the vernacular language of the Jews of Palestine
at the time.
The author, one Thaddeus, an Essene, had been a close associate of
Jesus and his group of Essenes, active on the
political scene in Jerusalem
The Essene sect
originated about 150 B.C. (the first-named Essene is Judas, 110
B.C.) and disappeared towards the end of the first century A.D,
destroyed by the Roman military in AD 70
According to Roman historian Pliny,
theEssenes were settled "on the west side of the Dead Sea, away
from the coast ... [above] the town of Engeda"
The Essenes flourished at the time of Jesus
and counted both Jesus and John the Baptist among their numbers. They
believed in the divinity of a Messiah who they called the
"Teacher of Righteousness", and who had died a violent
death at the hands of the sons of darkness. They called themselves
the "elect of God", and their religious community the
"New Covenant".
The
Essenes lived in communal homes and had their meals in common and in
silence. They chose
their leaders by a general vote, mingled their goods and earnings in
a common treasury, and obeyed the Chasidic motto, "Mine and
thine belong to thee.". They saw the nation as apostate,
themselves as the only true believers, and the desert as the place
to await the day of judgment when God would break in to throw the
Romans into the sea, uproot the wicked Sadducean priests, and put
themselves into the leadership of the nation.
Like
a number of the early Christian sects, the Essenes made male
homosexuality a condition of spiritual perfection and totally
abstained from wedlock, but chose other people's male children,
while they were pliable and fit for learning.
In summation, the Essenes were
an agricultural community, that was inherently commuistic and
homosexual in nature. In this they bore a strong resemblance to the
earlier Spartan and later Zulu communites who were also homosexually
oriented. Unilke the latter, the Essenes were not military or
warlike in nature, strictly avoided any kind of violence and did not
carry weapons.
The scroll contained detailed historical
material, easily verified, of the religious and political life in
Judea of the first quarter of the first century and is far more
accurate than the Christian Gospels, all of which were written many
years after the events and subject to constant rewriting. It is also
an explosive document which presents a picture of Jesus that is not
consistent with his subsequent image.
In our next issue, we will be quoting here a
number of significant passages from the translation which will show
this very clearly and it is obvious that trying to find a publisher
for this has proven to be monumental. There is no question it will
be published but where and when is not yet determined. Since book
publismhing and the print media are rapidly losing readers to the
internet, would it not be possible to use this media for an e-book?
The next article will cover Jesus as a
religious and political rebel against both the Roman authority and
the Jewish religious communities of Jerusalem and his arrest and
execution as a rebel, rather than as a religious leader.
Rumsfeld
departure shakes Bush administration
November
8, 2006
by
Paul Reynolds
World Affairs
correspondent, BBC News website
The resignation of the US Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld shows
how much the Bush administration is in disarray about Iraq.
The president made it quite clear at a news conference after the
election that he had decided beforehand that a "fresh
perspective" was needed at the Pentagon.
This means that, win or lose the election, Mr Bush had decided that
things were going badly enough to remove one of the architects of
the war.
In fact, when Mr Bush told reporters last week that Mr Rumsfeld
would be staying on, he had already spoken to Mr Rumsfeld about
leaving. He said to the news conference that "win or lose, Bob
Gates was going to become the nominee."
Whether Robert Gates, an ex CIA director, is the kind of man to
provide much of a fresh perspective remains to be seen. Until now he
has always been an establishment figure. But he seems to be about to
be one of the pegs on which new hopes will be hung.
Significant moment
The departure of Donald Rumsfeld is a major moment in the history
of the Bush administration and the war in Iraq.
His resignation is a sign and an admission that the policy in Iraq
has not worked, so far.
Apart from Vice-President Dick Cheney and President Bush himself,
there was nobody who symbolised the administration's determination
to wage the war on terror and to get rid of Saddam Hussein.
"We know they have weapons of mass destruction," he
announced of the Iraqis at one stage. "We don't need any debate
about it." His confidence and brusque dismissal of dissent was
typical. For some, it amounted to arrogance.
Ambitions
Rumsfeld brought to the Pentagon years of ambition to stir up a
department he had run as a much younger man under President Ford.
The recent book about the administration at war by Washington Post
reporter Bob Woodward, State of Denial, tells of the blizzard of
handwritten memos known as "snowflakes" with which he
bombarded his officials.
He was determined to break what he saw as the old guard and to get
control of policy himself, which he felt was too much in the hands
of the generals and admirals.
He wanted a slimmer, more mobile military, one more capable of
waging war on international terrorists and governments that
supported them and less concentrated on the massive weapons systems
that were being developed as if the Cold War had not ended.
Donald Rumsfeld felt himself to be the right man, in the right
place, at the right time.
His direct, irascible, sometimes even folksy style appealed to many
when things were going well. His famous dictum about there being
"known unknowns" and "unknown unknowns", made
pre-Iraq, was seen as quirky and "Rummy" at his most
idiosyncratic.
In a resignation appearance with President Bush and his own
successor in the Oval Office, Mr Rumsfeld referred. almost as if he
had not been appreciated, to "this little understood,
unfamiliar war, the first war of the 21st century... It is not well
known, it was not well understood, it is complex for people to
comprehend."
Downfall
However the very confidence that allowed him to make his mark on
the Pentagon also led to his downfall.
It became overconfidence.
He ignored warnings that his reliance on hard-hitting, relatively
small units would win the ground war in Iraq but would not win a
guerrilla war.
Like most US policymakers, he simply did not believe that Iraqis
would not welcome the invaders and take care of events for
themselves from then on.
He was not a man of patience and did not in the end have the
necessary patience for a long drawn out counter insurgency war. Nor
did he show the flexibility of tactics needed to demonstrate to his
commander-in-chief that he was going to deliver the victory the
president believes is so necessary.
He had
to go, whatever the results of the elections
Bush’s Beloved Turd Blossom WIlts
Rove
fails to blossom as Republicans stumble
November 8, 2006
by Julian Borger
Guardian
Karl
Rove, it appears, is mortal after all. Ever since the Bush-Rove
partnership surprised the American political world by conquering the
Texas governorship in 1994, his name has evoked dread in every
Democratic heart. Even safe Democratic seats seemed in danger when
Mr Rove came to town.
"Just because you lose one
ballgame, you don't lose your genius," the former House
majority leader, Tom DeLay argued today. But it is clear Mr Rove has
lost more than just an election. His plan to build a permanent
majority by solidifying the Republican base and wooing social
conservatives among Hispanics and black people, lies in ruins.
Hispanics voted Democrat by a margin of almost three to one. And
stirring up the culture war with contests over abortion, stem cell
research and gay marriage, may still have helped win a few seats,
but the constant polarising of American politics ultimately
alienated centrists, whose importance Mr Rove had scorned in his
focus on mobilising hardliners.
Independents
voted 60% for Democrats yesterday. Paul Begala, a Democratic
consultant noted that Mr Rove had overseen the decline in the
president's popularity from over 90% to under 40%, and the erosion
of the solid congressional majority established by Republicans in
1994.
"So where's the genius,
Karl," Mr Begala asked.
John Bolton joins
endangered list
November 10, 2006
by Mark Tran
Guardian
Having
dumped Donald Rumsfeld as his disastrous defence secretary, George
Bush may be forced to jettison America's man at the UN, John Bolton.
The
president still wants the lame-duck Senate to confirm Mr Bolton, who
was installed as ambassador to the UN during a recess, a procedural
move that got round Democratic opposition.
But
the Senate foreign relations committee has already turned down the
White House's resubmission of Mr Bolton as US ambassador. Should his
nomination ever reach the floor of the Senate for debate, the
Democrats have threatened to stretch out the debate to kill
it.
If
Mr Bush is calling for a new spirit of bipartisanship, why is he
pushing for the nomination of a self-avowed UN-basher, wonders
Steven Clemons at the Washington Note.
Mr
Bolton is not the only one on the endangered list.
Karl
Rove, the Republican party's much diminished
"brain", must be wondering about his future.
Asked
what role Mr Rove would now play, Tony Snow, the White House press
secretary, yesterday could only reply.
"That's
a good process question for which I don't have an answer."
Apart
from personnel changes, Mr Bush may have to drop some pet projects,
including his controversial surveillance
bill.
The
administration wants the power to conduct wiretaps without obtaining
warrants as required by the 1978 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance
Act. Now that control of the House has passed to the Democrats,
chances of the bill getting through are pretty slim.
A religious view
U.S.
churches sharply divided on Iraq war
November 4, 2006
by
Ed Stoddard
Reuters
DALLAS
(Reuters) - America's churches are still sharply divided on the war
in Iraq as their flocks prepare to go to the polls, although backing
for the conflict has dimmed even among the once solidly supportive
evangelical community.
Public
opposition to the war -- polls show a solid majority of more than 60
percent of Americans opposed -- is seen as a major reason President
George W. Bush's Republican Party is battling to retain control of
the U.S. Congress in Tuesday's elections.
And
with far higher church attendance rates in the United States than in
other parts of the rich industrialized world church stances on the
war, as on other issues, loom large in politics.
Among
mainstream Protestant denominations, leaders of the United Methodist
Church have been vocal in their criticism of Iraq.
"As
general secretary of the United Methodist General Board of Church
& Society, I have continued to speak against the war in
Iraq," said Jim Winkler, who also heads the church's social
justice and public policy wing.
"It
is my opinion that religious-based antiwar activities have been
essential to turning the tide of opinion in the United States
against the stupid and ill-conceived invasion of Iraq," he told
Reuters by e-mail.
Many
African-American churches have also come out in opposition to the
war, and the message is heard loudly in countless services every
Sunday.
"I
think that the contempt of many of the churches regarding the
conflict is because there were no weapons of mass destruction
discovered," said Pastor Robert Earl Houston Sr. of the
Westwood Baptist Church in Nashville, Tennessee
And
I think that after 9/11 we went after the wrong people," he
told Reuters by telephone, referring to the September 11 attacks,
and to the administration's pre-war stance that Iraq possessed
weapons of mass destruction.
Black
church opposition may also have roots in the high exposure of
African-American families and communities to the war.
African-Americans make up about 13 percent of the U.S. population,
but according to the U.S. Defense Department, they account for
around 18 percent of military personnel.
Pacifism
runs deep in other U.S. churches, such as the Quakers, Mennonites
and Anabaptists.
EVANGELICAL
SUPPORT
On
the other side of the divide are the largely white evangelical
Protestants, who have been a bedrock of support for the Republican
Party.
Evangelicals
also are reeling from a scandal after Ted Haggard resigned as
president of the National Association of Evangelicals and admitted
on Friday that he bought the drug methamphetamine and sought a
massage from a gay male prostitute. He denied using the drug or
having sex with the man.
Many
conservative evangelical Christians view the Iraq conflict as it is
presented by the administration -- as an essential part of the war
on terrorism declared by Washington after the September 11 attacks.
"If
people see we are taking the war to the terrorists instead of
fighting it on U.S. soil, then there is more support for it (among
social conservatives)," Tony Perkins, president of the Family
Research Council, a conservative lobby group with strong evangelical
ties, told Reuters.
Other
conservative Christians go far beyond the administration view, with
a stance that sees the Iraq war and war on terrorism as part of a
"clash of civilizations" or unfolding Biblical prophecy
"The
present day events in the Holy Land may very well serve as a prelude
or forerunner to the future Battle of Armageddon and the glorious
return of Jesus Christ," Jerry Falwell, head of the Moral
Majority Coalition and a supporter of the war, said recently in a
newsletter on his Web site.
But
although as a group they remain more committed to the conflict than
most Americans, there are signs that socially conservative
evangelicals' support for the war is flagging.
A
poll published last week by the Pew Research Center found that 58
percent of white evangelical Protestants surveyed felt the United
States made the right decision in using force in Iraq to oust Saddam
Hussein, below the 71 percent in a previous poll in September.
"As
the war has drawn on and the price has gotten higher we begin to ask
questions that we didn't 2 or 3 years ago. Like 'is this a just
war?'" said Gary Ledbetter, director of communications for the
Southern Baptists of Texas Convention.
Additional
reporting by Michael Conlon in Chicago
Losses on ballot measures jolt religious
right
November
8, 2006
By
David Crary
AP
From
the country's heartland, voters sent messages that altered America's
culture wars and dismayed the religious right — defending abortion
rights in South Dakota, endorsing stem cell research in Missouri,
and, in a national first, rejecting a same-sex marriage ban in
Arizona.
The
verdict on abortion rights was particularly clear. Oregon and
California voters defeated measures that would have required parents
to be notified before a girl under 18 could get an abortion, and
South Dakotans — by a margin of 56 percent to 44 percent —
rejected a new state law that would have banned all abortions except
to save a pregnant woman's life.
The
verdict on abortion rights was particularly clear. Oregon and
California voters defeated measures that would have required parents
to be notified before a girl under 18 could get an abortion, and
South Dakotans — by a margin of 56 percent to 44 percent —
rejected a new state law that would have banned all abortions except
to save a pregnant woman's life.
This
was really a rebellion in the heart of red-state, pro-life America
— the heart of the northern Bible Belt," said Sarah Stoesz,
head of the Planned Parenthood chapter
that oversees South Dakota. "It sends a very strong message to
the rest of the country."
South
Dakota legislators had passed the law in expectation it would
trigger a court challenge and lead to a possible Supreme Court
reversal of the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision legalizing abortion.
Abortion-rights leaders said Wednesday that such strategies should
be abandoned.
"Voters
in every corner of the country made it clear they are tired of
divisive attacks on a woman's right to choose," said Nancy
Keenan, president of NARAL Pro-Choice America.
Anti-abortion
leaders said the GOP shared some of the blame for the defeat. The
Rev. Thomas J. Euteneuer, president of Human Life International,
said President Bush and other
top Republicans failed to campaign strongly for the South Dakota
abortion ban and against the Missouri stem cell measure.
"While
South Dakotans fought valiantly to defend their babies, we once
again witnessed an almost total lack of support from the national
leadership," Euteneuer said.
The
anti-abortion group Operation Rescue said the election results meant
any legislation from Congress restricting abortion would be
"virtually impossible" for the next two years.
"America
has voted and the bloody results have placed the most vulnerable
among us, the pre-born, in the crosshairs for continued
extermination," said Operation Rescue President Troy Newman.
Janice
Shaw Crouse, a conservative analyst with Concerned Women for
America, suggested that Republicans — some of them entangled in
corruption and sex scandals — had lost some of the selling power
of the "family values" themes they had pushed in recent
elections.
"Families
had such high hopes when conservatives were in power; they ended up
discouraged, disappointed and disillusioned," she said.
In
Missouri, anti-abortion groups, evangelical Christian clergy and the
Roman Catholic Archdiocese of St. Louis campaigned hard against the
stem cell measure, contending it would condone life-destroying
embryonic research.
Debbie
Forck, a Catholic from Jefferson City, Mo., was among those giving
the measure a narrow victory.
"I've
had several family members that have had debilitating
illnesses," said Forck, 50. "It goes against my church,
but to eliminate pain in my life, I thought it was worth it."
Liberal
groups did have some setbacks. Michigan voters approved a ban on
some types of affirmative action programs, Colorado and Arizona
passed measures targeting illegal immigrants, and seven states
approved gay-marriage bans, joining 20 that had done so in previous
elections.
However,
gay-rights supporters took heart at the relatively close results in
some of the seven states, notably in South Dakota, where the ban
received only 52 percent of the vote.
In
Arizona, the defeat of the ban stemmed in part from its scope. It
not only would have reinforced an existing state law against
same-sex marriage, but also would have barred any government
entities from recognizing civil unions or domestic partnerships in
providing benefits to employees.
"We
knew all along that once voters were informed about the true impact.
... they would oppose this hurtful initiative," said Steve May
of Arizona Together, which opposed the measure. Gay-rights leaders
said the election results would likely shelve any serious push for a
federal ban-gay-marriage amendment. They also were pleased by the
defeats of several Republicans whom they considered archenemies —
notably Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum and Indiana Rep. John
Hostettler..)
"It's
the end of an era for divisive, gay-bashing politics — at least in
the minds of the American people," said Joe Solmonese,
president of the Human Rights Campaign.
Similarly,
abortion-rights groups welcomed the defeat of Kansas Attorney
General Phill Kline, a Republican who had touted his efforts to
seize women's medical records from abortion clinics.
"It
is time to end the abortion wars," said Frances Kissling,
president of Catholics for a Free Choice.
One
election subplot was a campaign led by New York City real estate
investor Howard Rich to promote ballot measures in numerous states
seeking to rein in state and local government.
Of
nine Rich-supported measures, only one succeeded — a
property-rights measure in Arizona that would require state and
local authorities to compensate property owners if land-use
regulations lower the value of their property. Similar measures lost
in California, Idaho and Washington, while Oregon and Colorado
rejected term-limit bills, and Maine, Nebraska and Oregon rejected
proposals to cap state spending.
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