"Comprehensive" is too weak a word to describe the Parents Television Council's website, www.parentstv.org. From the "About Us" page:

The PTC: bringing America's demand for positive, family-oriented television programming to the entertainment industry.

Now more than 850,000 members strong and growing every day, the Parents Television Council (PTC) was established in 1995 as a nonpartisan group, offering private sector solutions to restore television to its roots as an independent and socially responsible entertainment medium.

Television is the most powerful medium in the world. It can be a wonderful way to educate, inspire, and entertain America's children. Sadly it's doing the opposite and undermining the positive values parents are trying to instill in their young ones.

The PTC agrees that parents have the greatest responsibility when it comes to monitoring the viewing habits of their children, but the PTC challenges actors, writers, producers, musicians, game-makers and advertisers to get serious about the vital role they play in shaping America's culture. The gratuitous sex, foul language, and violence on TV (along with stories and dialogue that create disdain for authority figures, patriotism, and religion) are having a negative effect on children. Much of the PTC's success stems from motivating the public to voice its support of family-friendly programming to network executives, advertisers, public policy leaders, and the creative community in Hollywood.

Parentstv.org contains numerous features for both researching content and taking action. In addition to providing tools to contact elected officials, media and sponsors, the site serves as a great consumer resource. It includes a guide that profiles every sitcom and drama on ABC, CBS, Fox, NBC, UPN, and the WB, and those on select cable channels. Its movie reviews page comprises the work of several family-friendly reviewers, including Michael Medved. You'll never again have reason to say, "How did I get suckered into watching that piece of junk?"

Visit this link to sign up for PTC's E-Alerts on violence, sex and profanity in media. Each alert conveniently includes the tools needed contact the relevant parties.

(If you find this site useful and would like to help make political devotions a mass movement, please tell others about PoliticalDevotions.com or place a link to it on your website. Then when you've done so, be sure to e-mail me so I can thank you personally! - Tim.)

Posted by Tim at 2:21 AM EST

Updated: Monday, February 9, 2004 2:00 AM EST

Share This Post

Permalink

Focus on the Family reports on the constitutional crisis brewing in the Bay State:

Massachusetts' Supreme Judicial Court (SJC) ruled 4-3 Tuesday that it will accept nothing less than marriage -- name and all -- to satisfy its November demands that the state Legislature legalize homosexual marriage.

Senate President Robert Travaglini, D-Boston, had asked the court whether S.B. 2175 -- a bill he wrote that would introduce Vermont-style civil unions to the Bay State -- would satisfy justices' demand for same-sex marriage.

The answer was no.

. . . The court's decision would seem to ensure that Feb. 11's constitutional convention will go on as scheduled. Travaglini had been considering postponing a vote on the Marriage Affirmation and Protection Amendment (the MA and PA), which would define marriage as the union of a man and a woman in the state constitution, pending the court's decision on civil unions. But the fact that justices won't accept the compromise means no middle ground is left, said Rep. Vinny deMacedo, R-Plymouth.

. . . But if 101 of the state's 200 legislators vote to pass the MA and PA -- the minimum number required -- licenses still may not [sic] be issued, because the state will be in the throes of a constitutional crisis, said Evelyn Reilly, director of public policy for the Massachusetts Family Institute. The Bay State's constitutional amendment process takes two years; a proposed amendment must pass two consecutive legislative sessions, then be approved twice by a majority of the state's voters. The earliest the MA and PA could take effect is November 2006.

"If there's a vote on the amendment, that should send the signal to the SJC that they should hold off on implementing anything, because the constitution could well be amended," Reilly told CitizenLink. "For them to allow same-sex couples to have marriage licenses in May would create social chaos. Those people would be doing so at their own risk, because those licenses could be invalidated in 2006. That would certainly be the right thing to do - but this court is not known for doing the right thing."

The story includes links for e-mailing the relevant legislators, including a page with all 200 e-mail addresses for the Massachusetts legislators, some of whom get rather snippy about receiving input from out-of-state troublemakers. Don't be surprised if you receive a reply equating you with racists; I did.

Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney wrote a fine op-ed on this issue in the Wall Street Journal.

(If you find this site useful and would like to help make political devotions a mass movement, please tell others about PoliticalDevotions.com or place a link to it on your website. Then when you've done so, be sure to e-mail me so I can thank you personally! - Tim.)

Posted by Tim at 1:28 AM EST

Share This Post

Permalink

Here's a project that would be beneficial for any household, but essential for one containing children.

All late model TVs are equipped with parental controls such as V-chip technology, to control viewing of adult-rated programs, and channel selection, to delete channels from the surfing lineup. Even many older models at least have channel selection. (My ancient, coal-fired 1989 Panasonic has it.)

Why not dust off your TV's instruction booklet and learn how to use these functions? You can then set ratings for programs to be viewed in your home and delete the channels with objectionable material. MTV and the E! channel would make excellent deletion choices. Most systems have other prime candidates as well.

If you want to be really good soldier in the war against trash TV, also drag out your last cable bill and find the company's phone number or web address, then contact them and let them know which channels you have deleted from your TV's lineup, and why you would like to see those channels removed from the cable system altogether. Every advertisement for a new channel includes a plea to "Call your cable company and ask for the XYZ Network!" Since such calls are effective for adding channels to a cable lineup, it follows that they would also be effective in getting one removed. Along with your request for deletions, suggest some good replacements.

Finally, if you want to be a hero, also contact the offending channels' management and tell them why you object to their channels' content; that you have deleted them from your personal TV system, and have asked your cable company to remove them from the system lineup.

Use this link to contact MTV Chairman Tom Freston and Sumner Redstone - CEO of Viacom, which owns MTV. You can send a message to the E! channel's customer service staff here.

(If you find this site useful and would like to help make political devotions a mass movement, please tell others about PoliticalDevotions.com or place a link to it on your website. Then when you've done so, be sure to e-mail me so I can thank you personally! - Tim.)

Posted by Tim at 1:13 AM EST

Updated: Thursday, February 5, 2004 1:20 AM EST

Share This Post

Permalink

It's safe to say that, if a plebiscite on Janet Jackson's Super Bowl strip show could be held today in the US, majorities in the "red" (conservative) states would express opposition, while majorities in the "blue" (liberal) states would express support (no pun intended).

Marvin Olasky's entry in the World Magazine Blog summarizes the red state position well:

Given that America is a liberty theme park and that we've forgotten the distinction between liberty and license, gross jokes as well as enticements to adultery are inevitable, somewhere. The question is where. Christians do need to lighten up at times and not get overwrought about all the craziness around us, but why can't networks have a modicum of respect for the values of many television viewers?

Fathers and sons bond while watching football games; why must we lose the liberty to enjoy that without bombardment by crud? Our goal should be containment. Given the apparent inevitability of prostitution, why not keep it in the red-light district? Given the apparent inevitability of Internet porn, why must it be just one click away? And given Janet Jackson's apparent desire to expose her breast, why can't she do it on pay-per-view?

Conservatives understand context is crucial in sexual matters; that keeping sex private is a mark of civilization, of Man's moral obligation to behave like a human made in God's image rather than just one more animal species. This point is lost on most liberals, however. The Left's main problem with America is that we are not sufficiently "European," particularly as to public nudity and sexuality. Many on the Left will see Janet as a sort of Rosa Parks of public porn, a heroine who tried to bring enlightened European sexual culture to the benighted, backward, puritan US.

But where is Europe's early 21st Century ethic of hedonism uber alles taking it? To the same place its early 20th Century embrace of hedonism took it: enslavement to fascism. Islamo-fascism is poised to dominate Europe within 50 years, but the Europeans are too busy with six-week vacations, sex, food and nude beaches to care. The demands of aggressively opposing the growing evil in their midst would ruin all their fun. This is one of the main reasons they so hate President Bush. He's a big killjoy who wants to fight evil. Like the young pre-war Scarlet O'Hara, the Euros whine that "This war talk is ruining every party this season."

Amazingly, this is the ethic the American Left wants to bring to the US.

Ironically, sexual liberty is the only liberty the Left believe in. By their lights, the only sex that is wrong is sex that is "unsafe," but they have no tolerance for most other freedoms.

The Left has expressed, in one form or another and to one degree or another, opposition to: free markets, freedom of political speech, freedom to use tobacco, freedom to eat unhealthy food, freedom to choose a silicone breast implant, freedom to view even righteous violence in entertainment, freedom to keep earned wages, freedom to drive an SUV, freedom of school choice, freedom to publically acknowledge God, freedom to opt out of the government's retirement plan, freedom to think thoughts they find "hateful" - the list will never be complete. But I digress.

If hedonism existed as a free-standing phenomenon, perhaps it would be inconsequential, but because it inevitably results in an aversion to fighting evil (not to mention the destruction of marriage and family institutions), a European-style hedonistic ethic must be fought.

Focus on the Family has set up a utility with which you can with one click send the same e-mail to to MTV Chairman Tom Freston, CBS President Leslie Moonves and Sumner Redstone (CEO of Viacom, which owns both CBS and MTV). FCC Chairman Michael Powell correctly characterized the whole Jackson-Timberlake et al performance as "onstage copulation." Let the entertainment moguls know that such antics do not belong on the public airwaves, and ask your representatives to formulate and enforce laws preventing a repeat performance.

Update: Here's a Focus on the Family link for contacting the NFL.

(If you find this site useful and would like to help make political devotions a mass movement, please tell others about PoliticalDevotions.com or place a link to it on your website. Then when you've done so, be sure to e-mail me so I can thank you personally! - Tim.)

Posted by Tim at 1:25 AM EST

Share This Post

Permalink

As the President has proposed the largest budget increase in 20 years for the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA), now is a good time to look back at an April 22, 2003 Dennis Prager column on artists' values:

Many, perhaps most, great artists are geniuses in one area and underdeveloped elsewhere in life. It seems that when God grants great artistic talent to an individual, that individual is given few other gifts, least of all moral clarity or wisdom.

That is why there is rarely any link between artistic greatness and human greatness. We should no more expect a great actor or composer or painter to be a great human being than we should expect a great lawyer, truck driver, businessman or athlete to be a great human being. Art rarely makes a person wiser or kinder, whether the person is a connoisseur of art or the creator of it.

Those of us who love classical music -- and as an occasional orchestral conductor, I am particularly involved in music -- have long had to confront the lack of connection between genius and goodness or wisdom. Richard Wagner, for example, was one of the world's greatest composers and a racist anti-Semite. Neither Beethoven nor Mozart was known to be a particularly decent human being. Herbert von Karajan, one of the most celebrated conductors of the 20th century, served as Kapellmeister under Adolf Hitler and never apologized for his support of the Nazis. The great African-American singer Paul Robeson passionately supported Joseph Stalin until the day that mass murderer died.

. . . Only those who worship art should be surprised. And there are many of them. With the demise of the worship of God in Europe, secular Westerners began to worship new gods, most especially art and artists. This explains why so many people have asked how Germany, which produced Bach, Mozart and Beethoven, could also produce gas chambers -- as if producing great composers should in some way raise the moral level of that society.

So the next time you see "artists for" or "artists against" some cause, without reading any further, you can pretty much bet your mortgage that whatever it is they are for or against, they are morally wrong. While God may have granted artists little wisdom, He apparently did not skimp on hubris.

To the Left, state funding of their religion (art) is an absolute moral obligation; however, such funding to other religions - especially traditionalist and "unenlightened" Christianity and Judaism - is unconstitutional and corrupting to both church and state.

Let's keep in mind what the Salvation Army would do with our tax dollars versus what the NEA would do. While it has a new chairman who many believe will reverse its moral decay, the fact remains that in the past the NEA's priests have funded many projects with obscene and/or anti-religious content, including homosexual film festivals and blasphemous exhibits, in addition to plenty of just plain undisciplined, unskilled garbage, what historian Paul Johnson calls "fashion art." There is no guarantee this will not recur. Furthermore, in an era of out-of-control federal spending, the government should not waste 140 million tax dollars on what is, at best, a non-essential budget item, similar to the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (see our Jan. 1, 2004 entry).

Use our Take Action page to ask President Bush to reconsider the proposal and privatize the NEA. Ask your other representatives to do the same. A free market in art, like a free market in education, will liberate both the producers and consumers of the product.

(If you find this site useful and would like to help make political devotions a mass movement, please tell others about PoliticalDevotions.com or place a link to it on your website. Then when you've done so, be sure to e-mail me so I can thank you personally! - Tim.)

Posted by Tim at 2:52 AM EST

Updated: Tuesday, February 3, 2004 2:30 AM EST

Share This Post

Permalink

The education monopoly's puppets in Washington are attempting to destroy the nation's first federally funded school voucher program. Senators Richard Durbin (D-Ill.) and Ted Kennedy (D-Mass.) say they will introduce legislation in the Senate to repeal the D.C. schools voucher provision included in the appropriations package passed on Jan. 22.

Puffy, power-drunk uber-liberal Kennedy vows "This battle is far from over."

Ralph Neas of the far-left pressure group People for the American Way said, "I do think we have a very good chance to accomplish this legislatively."

This use of the legislative process is an uncharacteristically democratic approach for the Left, which generally seeks to impose its will on the majority through fatwas from judicial tyrants (e.g., the same-sex marriage and Boy Scouts assaults). However, D.C.'s congressional delegate confirms anti-voucher groups are exploring a court challenge against the program, so the old dog really hasn't learned any new tricks.

Of the current crop of Democrat presidential contenders, only Joe Lieberman supports voucher programs, and only as "experiments."

The teachers unions and the democrats know they're cornered. They know this tiny program has immense symbolic significance, and that the proven success of voucher programs foreshadows national education privatization and the end of their powerful monopoly. Use our Take Action page to ask President Bush and your representatives to mount an aggressive defense of the D.C. vouchers program against the legislative and court attacks that are sure to come.

(If you find this site useful and would like to help make political devotions a mass movement, please tell others about PoliticalDevotions.com or place a link to it on your website. Then when you've done so, be sure to e-mail me so I can thank you personally! - Tim.)

Posted by Tim at 12:22 AM EST

Share This Post

Permalink

I'm sure somewhere in the vast cannon of FDA regulations there are standards for what can be labeled "wine" - a certain alcohol percentage, etc. And I'll bet there are more than a few folks on the Left who enjoy wine, and would be rather miffed if the courts suddenly forced the FDA to change its definition of wine to "anything anyone wants to put in a bottle and call `wine.'"

Yet that is exactly what the Left wants to do to marriage. If the government calls the union of two people of the same sex a "marriage," then on what logical or ethical basis can it refuse to sanction the union of three or more people of either sex? Or of two or more blood relatives of either sex? Or of any number of people of either sex plus one or more animals (of either sex)? The combinations are limited only by one's imagination.

At its core, the same-sex marriage movement is not about obtaining the few unique rights accruing to marriage. It is about intolerance of heterosexual marriage's existence and of its veneration as a social ideal. It's about using the Left's favored weapon of mass destruction, judicial fiat, to force society to provide the same veneration to homosexual unions. Anything less would be "intolerant" - their new definition of intolerance being "Failure to accept and celebrate a given behavior."

Focus on the Family has a quite comprehensive CitizenLink Extra on this subject, featuring detailed arguments on all facets of the issue and tools for contacting the relevant elected representatives.

(If you find this site useful and would like to help make political devotions a mass movement, please tell others about PoliticalDevotions.com or place a link to it on your website. Then when you've done so, be sure to e-mail me so I can thank you personally! - Tim.)

Posted by Tim at 1:00 AM EST

Share This Post

Permalink

Focus on the Family's Citizenlink site has an interesting proposal for the Democrat and Republican national committees:

A coalition of pro-family groups is calling on the Republican and Democratic National Committees to create planks in their 2004 party platforms that affirm the United States as "one nation under God" and endorse the public display of the Ten Commandments.

"We're going to put the challenge to them publicly," said the Rev. Rob Schenck of the National Clergy Council, one of the groups behind the campaign. "We'll be showing up at a number of platform committee hearings around the country to urge them to make that clear statement to the American public."

You can join this effort by contacting Ed Gillespie. chairman of the Republican National Committee, and Terry McAuliffe, chairman of the Democratic National Committee, and urging them to create planks that honor the Pledge and Commandments.

You can send an e-mail to both chairmen at this link.

Gee, I wonder which party will readily agree to this request and which party will, at most, ignore it?

(If you find this site useful and would like to help make political devotions a mass movement, please tell others about PoliticalDevotions.com or place a link to it on your website. Then when you've done so, be sure to e-mail me so I can thank you personally! - Tim.)

Posted by Tim at 2:42 AM EST

Share This Post

Permalink

This proposed law would require abortion practitioners notify at least one parent of a minor at least 48 hours prior to performing the procedure, except in cases of medical emergency or suspected abuse. ParentalNotification.org's description of the initiative notes:

It is both a statute and a constitutional amendment so the Courts cannot rule it unconstitutional.

Privacy considerations are not granted to minors for obtaining medicines, tattoos, body piercing, marriage licenses, or admission to the armed services. Minors have never had the full complement of "rights" under constitutional law.

Statistics show that states with parental notification for minors seeking abortion promote family communication and allow for parental responsibility.

Polls show that both pro-choice and pro-life individuals favor Parental Notification.

It would be illegal for school counselors and other school personnel to arrange for a minor's abortion without her parent's knowledge.

In a LifeNews.com article, one of the initiative's official proponents, a mother whose teenage daughter had a clandestine abortion, describes the current problem well:

"Your sixteen-year-old daughter cannot get her ears pierced without your permission, but she can have a school nurse drive her to an abortion clinic in the middle of the day without your knowledge. It is not only common sense, it is a safety issue.

"This initiative is about promoting family communication," added Avila. "My goal is to help parents help their daughters."

Parental notification is indeed "common sense," and opinion polls show overwhelming support for notification laws, but no doubt the initiative will be opposed by the same forces aggressively fighting against education privatization and for power grabs such as universal preschool. In its usual ignorance of common sense, left-wing fundamentalist dogma dictates that the state always knows best when it comes to raising your children, and should have power over them under all circumstances and at all ages. Therefore an "enlightened" school nurse can facilitate an abortion of which you the parent (who might be one of those neanderthal pro-lifers) will never be informed.

The initiative's sponsors need 598,000 more signatures by April 15 to add it to the November 2004 ballot. You can request a petition here.

(If you find this site useful and would like to help make political devotions a mass movement, please tell others about PoliticalDevotions.com or place a link to it on your website. Then when you've done so, be sure to e-mail me so I can thank you personally! - Tim.)

Posted by Tim at 12:38 AM EST

Share This Post

Permalink

After nine years of debate in Congress, the Senate has given final approval to the nation's first federally funded school voucher program, providing $14 million a year in private school tuition grants to District of Columbia school children. Children First America reports:

The legislation permits Secretary of Education Roderick R. Paige to launch a five-year pilot program designed in consultation with Washington Mayor Anthony A. Williams (D) to provide annual, taxpayer-funded grants of up to $7,500 a year for at least 1,600 District schoolchildren to attend private and parochial schools beginning this fall.

"Opportunity scholarships" would be limited to children in families earning up to 185 percent of the poverty level -- about $36,000 for a family of four -- with priority going to children attending low-performing public schools.

Williams, to the consternation of critics in the District, was a supporter of the voucher program.

The victory revives a national school voucher movement that was left moribund after landslide defeats in voter referenda in 2000 in California and Michigan and follows a Supreme Court decision that upheld their constitutionality 19 months ago.

Nine years of debate over spending 14 stinkin' million dollars. But let's not fool ourselves. The issue is not the $14 million. Stocking the bar in Ted Kennedy's office for the past nine years probably cost $14 million. The core issue is whether left-wing ideologues will control our schools and the raising of our children. The debate dragged on this far (and litigation will continue) because of a powerful teachers union, a powerful anti-religion lobby that seeks to keep funds from parochial schools, and because of a vigorous left that believes the state, not parents, should raise children.

Yet we must celebrate this significant victory. Let's hope it is the camel's nose in the tent, the beginning of a movement that results in the end of the public education monopoly and the start of a free market in education from kindergarten to university. Use our Take Action page to thank the President and your pro-school-choice representatives for winning this victory for D.C. children, and handing a defeat to the anti-school-choice forces. And be sure to reiterate your support for further steps to privatize public education across the board.

(If you find this site useful and would like to help make political devotions a mass movement, please tell others about PoliticalDevotions.com or place a link to it on your website. Then when you've done so, be sure to e-mail me so I can thank you personally! - Tim.)

Posted by Tim at 12:55 AM EST

Share This Post

Permalink

A recent Wall Street Journal editorial focuses on what the editors call "the most profligate Administration since the 1960s":

The bottom line is truly shocking. Passage of the omnibus bill would raise total discretionary spending to more than $900 billion in 2004. By contrast, the eight Clinton-era budgets produced discretionary spending growth from $541 billion 1994 to $649 billion in 2001. Nor can recent increases be blamed on the war. At 18.6%, the increase in non-defense discretionary spending under the 107th Congress (2002-2003) is far and away the biggest in decades. In 2003, total federal spending topped an inflation-adjusted $20,000 per household for the first time since World War II

. . . The truth is that this spending bill is hardly necessary. The government has been running just fine at 2003 spending levels since September (have you noticed?), and can easily continue to do so for the rest of the fiscal year. We realize Mr. Bush is eager for passage of certain line items, such as his program to combat AIDS in Africa, but this bill is literally too high a price to pay, especially in terms of his own credibility. We're not holding our breath for a change of heart, but President Bush can help shore up his conservative base and appeal to many moderate voters by exercising his very first veto here.

Steve Moore of the Club for Growth is correct in calling the 2004 omnibus appropriations bill a "pork-laden monstrosity." Among other atrocities, it includes $50 million for an indoor rain forest in Coralville, Iowa and $2 million for a "golf awareness program" in St. Augustine, Florida. Pork barrel expenditures will total $23 billion in 2004.

Use our Take Action page to ask President Bush to veto the bill, and to demand that your representatives - particularly your Republican ones, who should know better - act to curtail out-of-control discretionary spending. Put them in shock by asking for cancellation of pork barrel projects in your state. Maybe that'll get their attention.

(If you find this site useful and would like to help make political devotions a mass movement, please tell others about PoliticalDevotions.com or place a link to it on your website. Then when you've done so, be sure to e-mail me so I can thank you personally! - Tim.)

Posted by Tim at 1:48 AM EST

Updated: Monday, January 26, 2004 2:13 AM EST

Share This Post

Permalink

FrontPage Magazine brings us a detailed and important exploration of the national security implications of the open borders movement. In his introduction, David Horowitz notes that the piece, written by William Hawkins and Erin Anderson,

. . . describes how America's borders have been under assault for forty years with consequences that are measurable and disturbing. The assault has been led by an open borders lobby that is sophisticated and powerful. Many of its components, moreover, have a history of antagonism to American purposes and a record of active support for America's enemies. Its funders are multi-billion dollar entities, who are unaccountable and unscrutinized. They have more discretionary incomes at their disposal to influence these issues than is possessed by either political party, or any business group, or even the federal government itself.

As Hawkins and Anderson show, the open borders campaign was already instrumental in damaging the nation's ability to defend itself before 9/11. Yet not even this terrible event has caused its activists to have second thoughts, or tempered their reckless attacks. Instead, the open borders lobby has expanded its efforts to eliminate America's border controls to include the active defense of terrorists and terrorist organizations and a continuing assault on the very policies the federal government has adopted to defend its citizens from terrorist attacks.

. . . William Hawkins and Erin Anderson have performed an essential public service by tying together the threads of this network and putting its agendas into perspective. The picture they paint is as detailed as it is disturbing and should open a national debate and perhaps congressional hearings on the uses to which taxpayer funds are being directed as the nation faces its post-9/11 threats.

And from the piece itself:

The concept of "open borders" has long been an agenda of the ideological left. Since the 1960s, a vast network -- including hundreds of organizations and tens of thousands of grassroots activists, backed by hundreds of millions of dollars from leftwing foundations -- has waged a sustained campaign to open America's borders to a mass migration from the Third World. Though these groups talk in terms of "human rights," the rights they demand are not the restrictions on government enshrined in the American Bill of Rights, but the claims on society for "equity" and "welfare" and special treatment for designated groups that are the familiar menu of the left and would, if enacted, amount to a revolution in America's existing social order. Which is precisely their intent.

Use our Take Action page to contact your representatives and advocate congressional hearings on the use of taxpayer funds by groups dedicated to the ideological left's open borders policy, which seeks to import and politically exploit a massive underclass and to undermine US efforts to defend against terror attacks.

(If you find this site useful and would like to help make political devotions a mass movement, please tell others about PoliticalDevotions.com or place a link to it on your website. Then when you've done so, be sure to e-mail me so I can thank you personally! - Tim.)

Posted by Tim at 12:14 AM EST

Share This Post

Permalink

The Center for Consumer Freedom describes itself as a "nonprofit coalition supported by restaurants, food companies, and consumers" created to defend against the "growing fraternity of ?food cops,' health care enforcers, militant activists, meddling bureaucrats, and violent radicals who think they know ?what's best for you'. . . ."

A cynical industry pressure group? Maybe. Will their actions in opposition to PETA further the spread of moral clarity in the US? Definitely. Their website observes:

Despite its deceptively warm-and-fuzzy public image, People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) has donated over $150,000 to criminal activists -- including those jailed for arson, burglary, and even attempted murder. In 2001, PETA donated $1,500 to the North American Earth Liberation Front, a criminal organization that the FBI classifies as "domestic terrorists." And since 2000, rank-and-file PETA activists have been arrested over 80 times for breaking various laws during PETA protests. Charges included felony obstruction of government property, criminal mischief, assaulting a cabinet official, felony vandalism, performing obscene acts in public, destruction of federal property, and burglary.

Like millions of other nonprofit groups in the United States (e.g., universities , houses of worship, social service organizations), PETA pays no federal taxes on its income. But few of these other tax-exempt groups share PETA's total disregard for the law. In 2002 PETA collected over $17 million from Americans, avoiding over $3 million in federal income taxes. Because this tax break amounts to a huge subsidy, every American taxpayer is footing the bill for PETA's behavior.

PETA's tax-exempt status was granted by the U.S. government on the basis of the group's willingness to conduct itself in a lawful fashion. We believe that PETA has failed to live up to its end of the bargain, and that the Internal Revenue Service should cancel PETA's tax-exempt status.

PETA is currently under IRS investigation. You can add your name to the Center's petition encouraging U.S. government officials to revoke PETA's tax-exempt status, and use our Take Action page to ask your elected officials to join the effort.

(If you find this site useful and would like to help make political devotions a mass movement, please tell others about PoliticalDevotions.com or place a link to it on your website. Then when you've done so, be sure to e-mail me so I can thank you personally! - Tim.)

Posted by Tim at 1:58 AM EST

Share This Post

Permalink

The Home School Legal Defense Association (HSLDA) and other pro-family groups are requesting action on AB 56, a California assembly bill which would lower the compulsory education age from 6 to 5 years of age, and take an incremental step toward a universal preschool program for 3 and 4 year- olds:

AB 56 lowers the compulsory attendance age for entry into school from 6 to 5 years of age. This requirement will apply to all children, whether their parents plan to send them to public school or private school (including private home schools).

AB 56 also makes "free" public preschool available to every child under 5 years of age on a voluntary basis. Should this bill pass, it could easily be followed by legislation to make institutionalized preschool mandatory. Universal preschool has been proposed by legislators in the past and is openly encouraged by proponents of early childhood education.

This bill goes beyond education. It states, "There is a further compelling need in California to ensure that early childhood development programs and services are universally and continuously available for children so that children enter school in optimum health and are emotionally well developed and ready and able to learn.... Therefore, it is the intent of the Legislature to provide.... Universal preschool programs that offer group experiences, developmentally appropriate curricula, and allow for a seamless integration to K-12 education for all children three and four years of age."

Rushing children into formal education will exact a heavy toll on the development of many children and will weaken the role of parents in their lives. This is diametrically opposed to the message parents are currently being given, that parents need to be more involved in their children's lives. AB 56 specifically states, "Children who have secure relationships with family members ... can become self-confident learners." However, parents cannot be more involved when the state either encourages or requires children to be with their parents for less time. Research supports later rather than earlier entry for children for educational development.

Visit this HSLDA page for an analysis of the bill and links to contact information for California legislators. Also, National Review Online has an interesting Q and A on the detrimental effects of preschool/daycare with Brian C. Robertson, author of Day Care Deception: What the Child Care Establishment Isn't Telling Us.

(If you find this site useful and would like to help make political devotions a mass movement, please tell others about PoliticalDevotions.com or place a link to it on your website. Then when you've done so, be sure to e-mail me so I can thank you personally! - Tim.)

Posted by Tim at 1:05 AM EST

Share This Post

Permalink

The CIA estimates North Korea now has enough plutonium for one or two nuclear weapons. If its nuclear ambitions remain unchecked, it will soon produce dozens annually and become a Nukes "R" Us, selling to any rogue state or terrorist group.

In addition to the eight declared nuclear nations, two dozen states have research reactors and enough highly enriched uranium to build at least one bomb on their own. The global nuclear inventory comprises more than 30,000 nuclear weapons, and enough highly enriched uranium and plutonium for 240,000 more. Hundreds of the existing weapons are vulnerable to theft.

A nuclear weapon can be created from an amount of uranium a little larger than a softball, and can be easily smuggled across porous US borders or in the 98% of cargo containers not opened for inspection at US ports.

Osama bin Laden's "press spokesman," Sulaiman Abu Ghaith, has announced al Qaeda aspires to "kill 4 million Americans, including 1 million children."

These are the hard facts that confront us in our war to save Western civilization. In a 4000-word essay in the January/February edition of Foreign Affairs, Harvard professor Graham Allison focuses on the Bush administration's need to develop a coherent strategy for combating the nuclear terror threat, and gives a sobering prediction that unless changes occur, a nuclear terror attack on the US within the next decade is "more likely than not."

Allison gives short shrift to the importance of the Iraq war, yet at the same time he offers a workable strategy centered around "Three No's" - no loose nukes, no new nascent nukes, and no new nuclear states. His is not a toothless UN-style appeasement protocol; it includes both the threat and use of military force when necessary. He observes that while enforcement of a doctrine based on the Three No's would be ambitious, it is no more ambitious than enforcement of the Bush Doctrine of regime change in terrorist-harboring states.

Use our Take Action page to advocate to your representatives the adoption of a formal Bush Doctrine of zero tolerance for barbarians with nuclear weapons, employing a strategy akin to Allison's "Three No's."

(If you find this site useful and would like to help make political devotions a mass movement, please tell others about PoliticalDevotions.com or place a link to it on your website. Then when you've done so, be sure to e-mail me so I can thank you personally! - Tim.)

Posted by Tim at 3:13 AM EST

Updated: Monday, April 26, 2004 7:44 AM EDT

Share This Post

Permalink

One would think the California Democratic Party couldn't sink any lower than it already has, its elected officials having presided over the destruction of a once-great state, ultimately leading to the recent gubernatorial recall election. But they always seem to find a new low to hit.

In a Jan. 16 FrontPage Magazine article, Steve Emerson exposes California Democratic Party Chairman Art Torres' despicable pandering to radical Islamists in an appearance before the Muslim Public Affairs Council (MPAC) convention:

The incendiary language and the fabricated allegations used against me since 1994 by various radical Islamic groups were chillingly reminiscent of the language used by Art Torres. In fact, the incitement by Torres was lifted directly from the attacks against me by the Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR), a group created by Hamas front groups in the United States, the American Muslim Council (a Saudi created group whose leader was just indicted on secretly working for Libya in the US and who had been secretly affiliated with Hamas and Al-Qaeda leaders) and the Muslim Public Affairs Council (MPAC). . . .

. . . That Mr. Torres chose to legitimize a group that supports Islamic terrorism and that he himself parroted the same incendiary rhetoric issued by MPAC and other extremist organizations shows that the murderous deceit that led to 9/11 is still alive and well, at least in California.

You can express your outrage at the links below:

Find and Contact Your California Legislators

Governor Schwarzenegger's Homepage

Contact The California Democratic Party

Bonus Link: To no one's surprise, the American Library Association (aka "Librarians for Totalitarians") has failed to do the right thing in the Cuban librarian affair (see our 12/29/2003 entry).

(If you find this site useful and would like to help make political devotions a mass movement, please tell others about PoliticalDevotions.com or place a link to it on your website. Then when you've done so, be sure to e-mail me so I can thank you personally! - Tim.)

Posted by Tim at 4:53 AM EST

Share This Post

Permalink

In a Jan. 14 guest commentary in National Review Online on the Democrats' lack of a plan for Social Security, Michael Tanner of the Cato Institute offers a good summary of the status quo:

Social Security is not only the largest U.S. government program, accounting for 23 percent of federal spending, it is the largest government program in the world. The Social Security payroll tax is the largest tax paid by the average American working family. In fact, nearly 80 percent of us pay more in Social Security taxes than we do in federal income taxes. At the same time, millions of the elderly rely on Social Security for much, if not most, of their retirement income.

The 68-year-old program is also in crisis. In just 15 years, Social Security will begin to run a deficit, spending more on benefits than it takes in through taxes. The federal IOUs in the Social Security Trust Fund are an accounting measure, not real assets that can be used to fund the program. Unless the program is drastically changed, taxes will have to be raised or benefits cut. But taxes are already so high that younger workers are receiving low, below-market returns from Social Security. Cutting benefits would be a severe burden to millions of low- and middle- income elderly.

While the libertarian Cato Institute's foreign policy is myopic and naive, their analysis of domestic issues is often spot-on. The Cato Social Security Alternative, summarized at the institute's Social Security Choice website (www.SocialSecurity.org ) offers a well thought-out privatization plan which could be implemented immediately, if public opinion drove elected officials to do so.

In fact, President Bush has already stated his position that younger workers should be allowed to invest a portion of their payroll taxes privately through individual accounts. With extensive public support, he could lead a Social Security privatization initiative that would not only save the system, but enable workers to retire much, much wealthier than they would under the current socialist model.

Use our Take Action page to let the President and your representatives know you would like to see complete Social Security privatization, along the lines of the Cato Social Security Alternative model.

Bonus Link: A telling quote from a Wall Street Journal article on rebuilding the Iraqi education system.

When American or international agencies wanted to impose progressive education (learn-through-play) in Iraqi schools, we reminded representatives of these agencies that Iraqis had to decide what they wanted to be taught in the schools and how it would be taught.

Hmm. . . . Prohibiting academics from imposing their will, and allowing parents to decide what children are taught and how. How `bout we try that here in the US?

(If you find this site useful and would like to help make political devotions a mass movement, please tell others about PoliticalDevotions.com or place a link to it on your website. Then when you've done so, be sure to e-mail me so I can thank you personally! - Tim.)

Posted by Tim at 3:17 AM EST

Share This Post

Permalink

In her Jan. 14 column, Michelle Malkin targets the nationwide campaign against home schooling waged by liberal political figures and the media. She cites a New Jersey assembly bill - designed to punish home schooling parents for the crimes of the state's own child welfare system - as emblematic of the trend:

Congressman Mark Foley, R-Fla., a member of the House Ways and Means Committee and Co-Chairman of the Congressional Missing and Exploited Children's Caucus, noted at a hearing last year that: "Most people treat their pets better than the state of New Jersey has treated its children." The problem is systemic and nationwide. In Foley's state, 7-year-old Rilya Wilson is just one of 500 missing children in the child welfare system who have vanished. In California, Independent Institute research fellow Wendy McElroy reports, children are rushed into dangerous foster care homes thanks to a toxic combination of perverse financial incentives and lack of accountability for social workers' gross misconduct and neglect.

. . . At bottom, Weinberg's bill [mandating yearly health checks and testing for New Jersey's home-schooled children] is a cynical power grab -- something homeschoolers across the country have been fending off as the movement's success has skyrocketed. "This is about legislators interfering with parental rights," Tricia McQuarrie, a South Jersey homeschooling mother of five, told me. "It's Big Brother." Indeed, legislators and the liberal media (witness CBS News' anti- homeschooling hit piece last October) are pushing for increased regulation of homeschooling parents, including criminal background checks, because the grass-roots movement gravely threatens their socialist agenda of promoting dependency. God forbid children be taught by their own parents without oversight from the all-knowing, all-caring, infallible wizards of the child welfare-public school monopoly!

A crackdown on innocent homeschooling families to cure the incompetence of government child welfare agencies is like a smoker lopping off his ear to treat metastatic lung cancer. It's a bloody wrong cure conceived by a fool who caused his own disease.

Use our Take Action page to express to your representatives and media outlets support for the home schooling movement, and your opposition to government regulation of a phenomenon that has proved, in study after study, to produce educated, successful and well-adjusted children.

Bonus Link: One of the best things about home school is that stuff like this never happens.

(If you find this site useful and would like to help make political devotions a mass movement, please tell others about PoliticalDevotions.com or place a link to it on your website. Then when you've done so, be sure to e-mail me so I can thank you personally! - Tim.)

Posted by Tim at 4:17 AM EST

Share This Post

Permalink

The San Diego Union Tribune on Jan. 9 reported:

The city of San Diego has agreed to cancel its lease in Balboa Park with the Boy Scouts, hoping to end the city's role in a 3? -year legal battle with the American Civil Liberties Union.

The Boy Scouts, however, vowed to continue fighting for its 18-acre headquarters even without city support, because it believes its constitutional liberties are at stake. Last month, the group received a letter of support from the U.S. Justice Department, stating the group's predicament raised "substantial concerns" that the group's rights were being violated.

The ACLU filed the lawsuit against the city and the Boy Scouts in August 2000, two months after the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that the Boy Scouts could refuse to admit gay troop members or troop leaders. The lawsuit said the city showed favoritism toward a religious organization by leasing the Scouts land for $1 a year.

The city's settlement was announced yesterday, though the City Council made the decision Dec. 9 in a closed session. As part of the deal, the city agreed to pay $790,000 of the ACLU's legal fees and $160,000 in court costs.

The city also agreed to drop its defense of a separate but similar lease of land at Fiesta Island. That matter is still pending in San Diego federal court but could go to trial this year.

In the Bizarro World of the judicial tyrants, a non-sectarian youth organization whose members believe in God magically becomes a "religious organization" and, even more magically, civic support of such an organization becomes a violation of the US Constitution's establishment clause. And for its efforts to fight the crime of open belief in God, the ACLU will be rewarded with nearly $1 million in legal fees to continue its assault on the Boy Scouts and other manifestations of traditional values - values which the Constitution's framers would have overwhelmingly supported.

You can contact the Justice Department here, and ask that it use all its powers to support the Scouts in these lawsuits. You can also express your disgust to the San Diego City Council here, and make a financial contribution to the Scouts here.

(If you find this site useful and would like to help make political devotions a mass movement, please tell others about PoliticalDevotions.com or place a link to it on your website. Then when you've done so, be sure to e-mail me so I can thank you personally! - Tim.)

Posted by Tim at 3:47 AM EST

Share This Post

Permalink

BBC "chat show" host Robert Kilroy-Silk has been under relentless fire from a British Moslem pressure group and his own government since publication in the Sunday Express of a piece in which he criticized the Arab world. Unfortunately it seems the only place this column can be read in its entirely is in an abominably formatted press release from the tolerant souls at the Muslim Council of Britian.

Some excerpts from Kilroy-Silk's column:

. . . After all, the Arab countries are not exactly shining examples of civilisation, are they? Few of them make much contribution to the welfare of the rest of the world. Indeed, apart from oil - which was discovered, is produced and is paid for by the West - what do they contribute? Can you think of anything? Anything really useful? Anything really valuable? Something we really need, could not do without? No, nor can I. Indeed, the Arab countries put together export less than Finland.

We're told that the Arabs loathe us. Really? For liberating the Iraqis? For subsidising the lifestyles of people in Egypt and Jordan, to name but two, for giving them vast amounts of aid? For providing them with science, medicine, technology and all the other benefits of the West? They should go down on their knees and thank God for the munificence of the United States.

What do they think we feel about them? That we adore them for the way they murdered more than 3,000 civilians on September 11 and then danced in the hot, dusty streets to celebrate the murders? That we admire them for the cold-blooded killings in Mombasa, Yemen and elsewhere? That we admire them for being suicide bombers, limb-amputators, women repressors? I don't think the Arab states should start a debate about what is really loathsome.

But why, in any case, should we be concerned that they feel angry and loathe us? The Arab world has not exactly earned our respect, has it? Iran is a vile, terrorist-supporting regime - part of the axis of evil. So is the Saddam Hussein-supporting Syria. So is Libya. Indeed, most of them chant support for Saddam.

That is to say they support an evil dictator who has gassed hundreds of thousands of their fellow Arabs and tortured and murdered thousands more. How can they do this and expect our respect?

Why do they imagine that only they can feel anger, call people loathsome? It is the equivalent of all the European nations coming out in support of Hitler the moment he was attacked by the US, because he was European, despite the fact that he was attempting to exterminate the Jews - and Arabs.

Moreover, the people who claim we are loathsome are currently threatening our civilian populations with chemical and biological weapons. They are promising to let suicide bombers loose in Western and American cities. They are trying to terrorise us, disrupt our lives. And then they expect us to be careful of their sensibilities?

We have thousands of asylum seekers from Iran, Iraq, Algeria, Egypt, Libya, Yemen, Saudi Arabia and other Arab countries living happily in this country on social security. This shows what their own people think of the Arab regimes, doesn't it? There is not one single British asylum seeker in any Arab country. That says it all about which country deserves the epithet loathsome.

Given that Kilroy-Silk has said the column as he originally wrote it referred to Arab regimes and not every last individual Arab, and except for an erroneous designation of Iran as an Arab country, exactly what in this piece is untrue? Initially, the head of an Arab organization actually agreed with Kilroy-Silk, but later backpedaled.

Not only has he been suspended from his BBC program, but in an Orwellian twist Kilroy-Silk also faces a police investigation and possible criminal prosecution under the "Public Order Act" for committing the thought crime of accurately describing the Arab world. An excerpt from The Scotsman is chilling:

The Commission for Racial Equality has referred the matter to the police.

Trevor Phillips, head of the CRE, said he expected the MP-turned-presenter to be prosecuted for inciting racial hatred.

Mr Phillips said on Sky News: "Well this is now a matter for the police. What will happen is the police will investigate it, look at the Public Order Act and assess whether this could be interpreted as an incitement of racial hatred. There are clear legal tests for that.

"If it is then it will go the Crown Prosecution Service who will then discuss whether there's a case to be made and if there is a case to be made, Mr Kilroy-Silk will be prosecuted.

"I have to say, if it's deemed not to be a breach of the laws on racial hatred, we will have to have a pretty good look at those laws."

Just out of curiosity, how many radical Moslem organizations in Britain have been prosecuted for "incitement of racial hatred" against Jews under the Public Order Act?

For what it's worth, you can express your outrage over the suspension to the BBC at its contact page. You can also use our Take Action page to ask the US State Department to put down their wine glasses and lodge a protest with the British government against restrictive speech laws that reasonable people would associate with Saudi Arabia rather than a free democracy.

(If you find this site useful and would like to help make political devotions a mass movement, please tell others about PoliticalDevotions.com or place a link to it on your website. Then when you've done so, be sure to e-mail me so I can thank you personally! - Tim.)

Posted by Tim at 3:46 AM EST

Share This Post

Permalink