Friday, June 3, 2011

GOD wins! Prayer in TX High School Graduation is now Allowed!

A federal judge's decision to prohibit public prayer at a Texas high school graduation ceremony is an "activist decision" that "bristles with hostility," a Republican senator charged Friday.

U.S. Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, denounced a ruling by Chief U.S. District Judge Fred Biery that forbids the Medina Valley Independent School District from using specific religious words in their high school graduation ceremony on Saturday.

"The district court's decision, to quote the late Chief Justice (Rehnquist), 'bristles with hostility to all things religious in public life,'" Cornyn said in a written statement Friday. "This heavy-handed, activist decision is exactly the wrong civics lesson to teach to the class of 2011, and it should be overturned by the Fifth Circuit."

Cornyn also expressed support for Medina Valley High School valedictorian Angela Hildenbrand, who argues her right to free speech would be violated if she could not pray during her commencement speech.

"As valedictorian of Medina Valley High School, Angela Hildenbrand has earned the right to deliver a graduation speech that is uncensored by a federal judge," Cornyn said.

Public School Teaches Kindergarteners There Are Multiple Genders Without Parental Consent

New Senate Bill If Passed Would Make Embedding Videos On The Internet A Felony

Kurt Nimmo
Infowars.com
June 2, 2011
Techdirt reports that Senate bill 978 – a bill to amend the criminal penalty provision for criminal infringement of a copyright, and for other purposes – may be used to prosecute people for embedding YouTube videos.

According to Mark Masnick, if a website embeds a YouTube video that is determined to have infringed on copyright and more than 10 people view it on that website, the owner or others associated with the website could face up to five years in prison.

Read Masnick’s article here. He explains how the new law would expand copyright violations from reproducing and distributing to performing – including streaming video over the internet.

As readers of Infowars.com know, many videos are removed from YouTube after copyright owners complain about infringement. This happens with thousands of news clips every year. Most people are familiar with the now common black box replacing a video that says the video has been removed for copyright reasons.

If enacted, this law will go one step further and turn people who embed a copyrighted video into criminals. It will also set the stage to criminalize linking to copyrighted information — like corporate media news sources — and shut down the alternative media.

It will also make people think twice about putting up all kinds of videos, from news reports to clips from documentaries and other educational material.

It does not take a vivid imagination to realize the political implications of this legislation.

Here is the full text of the bill.

Addendum

It should be noted that outlawing certain activities on the internet is instrumental to the Obama administration’s copyright policy.

In March, the White House’s Intellectual Property Enforcement Coordinator, Victoria Espinel, provided Congress with a White Paper (available for download here), outlining a series of the Obama Administration’s recommended legislative changes to combat online piracy and counterfeiting.

“Significantly, the recommendations include making it a felony offense to stream infringing content and giving Federal agencies wiretapping authority to obtain evidence of criminal copyright and trademark offenses,” David Makarewicz wrote for Infowars.com on March 17.

Obama’s emerging policy on streaming media dovetails with his administration’s effort to seize web domains. The Department of Homeland Security now arrests web site operators under its “In Our Sites” program.

“On the pretext of protecting intellectual property from infringement and counterfeiters, it’s about fast-tracking Internet distribution and information technology rules to subvert Net Neutrality, privacy, and personal freedoms – global rules for unrestricted free trade, undermining universal, affordable free access, civil liberties, legitimate commerce, and the right of sovereign nations to go their own way,” writes Steve Lendman.

Read More From Info Wars.com

Judge Says If Anyone Prays At TX HS Graduation They Will Find Themselves In Legal Trouble

A federal judge has ordered a Texas school district to prohibit public prayer at a high school graduation ceremony.

Chief U.S. District Judge Fred Biery’s order against the Medina Valley Independent School District also forbids students from using specific religious words including “prayer” and “amen.”

The ruling was in response to a lawsuit filed by Christa and Danny Schultz. Their son is among those scheduled to participate in Saturday’s graduation ceremony. The judge declared that the Schultz family and their son would “suffer irreparable harm” if anyone prayed at the ceremony.

Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott said the school district is in the process of appealing the ruling, and his office has agreed to file a brief in their support.

“Part of this goes to the very heart of the unraveling of moral values in this country,” Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott told Fox News Radio, saying the judge wanted to turn school administrators into “speech police.”

“I’ve never seen such a restriction on speech issued by a court or the government,” Abbott told Fox News Radio. “It seems like a trampling of the First Amendment rather than protecting the First Amendment.”

Judge Biery’s ruling banned students and other speakers from using religious language in their speeches. Among the banned words or phrases are: “join in prayer,” “bow their heads,” “amen,” and “prayer.”

He also ordered the school district to remove the terms “invocation” and “benediction” from the graduation program.

“These terms shall be replaced with ‘opening remarks’ and ‘closing remarks,'” the judge’s order stated. His ruling also prohibits anyone from saying, “in [a deity’s name] we pray.”

Should a student violate the order, school district officials could find themselves in legal trouble. Judge Biery ordered that his ruling be “enforced by incarceration or other sanctions for contempt of Court if not obeyed by District official (sic) and their agents.”

The Texas attorney general called the ruling unconstitutional and a blatant attack from those who do not believe in God -- “attempts by atheists and agnostics to use courts to eliminate from the public landscape any and all references to God whatsoever.”

“This is the challenge we are dealing with here,” he said. “(It’s) an ongoing attempt to purge God from the public setting while at the same time demanding from the courts an increased yielding to all things atheist and agnostic.”

Ayesa Khan, an attorney representing the student and his parents, told KABB-TV she was delighted in the judge’s decision.

“It caused him a great deal of anxiety,” she said, referring to her teenage client. “He has gone to meet with the principal to try and talk in a civilized way about long-standing problems, and the school district has continued to thumb its nose.”

The judge did grant students permission to make the sign of the cross, wear religious garb or kneel to face Mecca. But that’s not good enough for some students at the high school.

“It’s just a big surprise that one kid can come in and change what’s been a tradition since Medina Valley started,” student Abigail Russell told KABB-TV.

Fellow student Alicia Jade Geurin agreed.

“At graduation, I would love to be able to speak from my heart,” she told the TV station. “But in this situation I feel my freedom of speech and my First Amendment is being infringed upon if I can’t say what I feel.”

Court Rules NY Public Schools Can Ban Churches From Holding Worship Services In Their Facilities

By Nathan Black | Christian Post Reporter

A federal appeals court ruled Thursday that New York City public schools can prohibit churches from using the facilities for worship services.

The Court of Appeals for the 2nd Circuit said the decision does not constitute viewpoint discrimination because it does not seek to exclude religious expression but rather excludes a type of activity – worship services.

"The exclusion of religious worship services is a reasonable content-based restriction," the appeals court said in its opinion.

It's been a long battle for Bronx Household of Faith. The church has been facing hurdles since 1994, when its application to rent a public school building for Sunday services was rejected by the New York City Board of Education.

Ever since then, the church has been in and out of court.

Thursday's decision reverses a lower court ruling that had blocked the city from enforcing a rule that bans outside groups from using school premises for religious services.

Read More From Christian Post

Radical Clerics In Pakistan Wants Court To Ban The Bible

Wednesday, June 01, 2011

(CNSNews.com) – A group of radical clerics in Pakistan wants the country’s Supreme Court to declare certain passages in the Bible blasphemous – because they depict as flawed certain biblical characters whom Muslims regard as Islamic prophets.

If the court fails to do so, they said, then lawyers will submit an application for the Bible to be formally banned in Pakistan.

The campaign, announced by the clerics at a Lahore mosque and reported Tuesday in the Karachi daily The News and the Urdu-language Roznama Islam, is the latest attempt by radicals to use the country’s blasphemy laws to shield Islam from perceived insults.

Citing Florida pastor Terry Jones’ Qur’an-burning act, the leader of the initiative, Abdul Rauf Farooqi, said the campaigners would like to pay back such “blasphemers” by doing the same to the Bible, but would not follow in their footsteps.

Instead, he and the other clerics in the campaign want Pakistan’s top court to rule that certain passages in the Bible are blasphemous, since they undermine prophets’ sanctity by portraying them as flawed or immoral.

Farooqi, who is leader of the Islamist organization JUI-S (Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam Sami-ul-Haq group), said the “insertions” in the Bible were offensive to Muslims, who hold all prophets in high esteem.

Reports on Farooqi’s statements did not include references to the supposedly blasphemous passages. So sensitive is the subject in Pakistan that people are typically accused of blasphemy without the actual offending words being repeated, lest the accuser, court official or anyone else be accused themselves of blaspheming.

Muslim teaching holds that Mohammed did not establish a new religion in the 7th century, but was the last in a long line of prophets of Islam stretching back to Adam, and including Moses and Jesus.

Among the biblical figures viewed by Muslims as Islamic prophets are some whom the Bible clearly describes as behaving immorally, such as David, who coveted a man’s wife and so sent him to face certain death on the battle frontlines; and Solomon, who later in life sought out pagan women and their gods.

On the other hand, biblical assertions that Jesus is God, that he died and rose from the dead, and that salvation comes through his name only, are all in conflict with Islamic teachings. They, too, could arguably be seen by Muslims as blasphemous – both towards the Qur’an and, indirectly, towards Mohammed, who Muslims believed received the inerrant revelation from Allah.

Pakistan’s blasphemy laws include a provision (295-C) that carries life imprisonment or the death penalty for defiling the name of Muhammad, “by words, either spoken or written, or by visible representation or by any imputation, innuendo, or insinuation, directly or indirectly.”

Farooqi was quoted as saying he was confident blasphemy could be proven in court. If they failed to do so, he said, he and his colleagues would accept whatever punishment the court would choose to impose.

Read More From CNSNews

Wyoming Preachers Arrested For Saying Abortion Is Murder

Charlie Butts - OneNewsNow - 6/1/2011 4:15:00 AM
Following the arrests of two pastors, pro-lifers throughout the country have a bone to pick with local authorities in Jackson Hole, Wyoming.

Pastors Mark Holick of Spirit One Ministries and Chet Gallagher learned from a newspaper story at the conclusion of a several-day-long pro-life demonstration that authorities in Jackson Hole had obtained a restraining order against them for the final day. During a meeting with police, they were told what they could and could not do at a local festival.

"The restraining order said that we had to stay two blocks away and that we couldn't show any graphic signs within that two-block area," Holick accounts.

The pastor tells OneNewsNow that he began to wonder whether the police or the judge who issued the order had read the Constitution. "In [a] meeting, they began to expand on that thing -- that we could not even talk about abortion...Brent Blue, the abortionist, or the shedding of innocent blood," he explains.

Both ministers then informed the group that they would don T-shirts that read "abortion is murder." They then asked what would happen if they began to preach, and they were told, "If you preach anything about abortion or Brent Blue, then I'll arrest you."

Nevertheless, both decided to exercise their free-speech rights and preach near the event. Gallagher was first arrested and taken to jail, and Holick followed. So the Spirit One Ministries pastor is encouraging people to urge the city attorney's office to drop the charges. Otherwise, he says, they will have discussions with constitutional attorneys about filing a lawsuit.

Read More From One News Now

Billboards In Australia Declare Jesus A Prophet Of Islam


A Catholic Bishop has slammed a series of provocative billboards in Sydney touting Jesus as a “prophet of Islam”.

The Islamic apologist website Mypeace.com.au launched the controversial advertising campaign to provoke discussion and promote free literature.

Auxiliary Bishop of the Archdiocese of Sydney, Julian Porteous, described the campaign as a direct assault on Christianity and called for the billboards to be immediately removed.

“In Australia with its Christian heritage a billboard carrying the statement ‘Jesus A prophet of Islam’ is provocative and offensive to Christians,” he said.

“Central to Christianity is the belief that Jesus Christ is more than a prophet. He is the Son of God. He is acclaimed Lord and Saviour of humanity.

“This statement is a direct assault on Christian beliefs,” said Bishop Porteous.

The bishop has also lamented that the incendiary campaign has the potential to damage relations between the Christian church and the Muslim community.

“It is important that religions do not set out to antagonise those with differing beliefs. ThiLinks would threaten the social harmony which we enjoy in Australia.

“Dialogue between the religions can only take place when it is founded in mutual respect. It is not fostered by provocative statements,” he said.

“For the sake of preserving social harmony and respect between major world religions these billboards should be withdrawn, along with others which carry messages directly offensive to Christians.

Despite one of the billboards being vandalised within 24 hours of its launch, Mypeace.com.au has announced the campaign will now be extended beyond the original four weeks.

Read More from Christianity Today