7:00 – 8:00: Al Fadi – Author of The Quran Dilemma, will be talking on the subject of Honor Killing
in Islam

8:00 – 9:00: Commentary

9:00 – 10:00: Robert Jeffress – Author of Twilights Last Gleaming

A report today that gasoline prices soon could reach a record $4.25 a gallon provides fuel for Republican plans to attack President Barack Obama on the issue.

Gasoline prices never have been higher at this time of the year, with a 25 percent increase just since Jan. 1 putting the national figure at $3.53 a gallon, compared with the $1.89 gas cost when Obama was inaugurated. And experts say they could reach a record $4.25 by late April, according to the new report.

The Oil Price Information Service says the projected wallet-busting $4.25 a gallon would top the previous record of $4.11 in July 2008. The national average for gasoline began the year at $3.28 a gallon. The $3.53 price point now is up from $3.17 a gallon last February, a record at the time. In 2007, before the recession hit, the average for February was $2.25 a gallon.

Republicans are marshaling their forces to make the price explosion an election issue, and in turn, the White House is preparing a counterattack, according to The New York Times.

Republican presidential candidate Newt Gingrich raised the issue several times last week, stressing the need about opening up more federal land to oil and gas drilling as a path toward U.S. energy independence — and lower pump prices.

Gingrich wrote on Twitter on Friday that “gasoline prices are unacceptable. We can do better!” He urged his supporters to sign a petition on his website calling for a return to $2.50-a-gallon gas. “Drill here. Drill now. Pay less,” the petition says.

The issue is hard for Obama to duck, with the ballooning prices taunting voters on gas station signs at every street corner.

Indeed, as the president’s motorcade whisked him through scenic Orange County, Calif., on Thursday en route to a California fundraiser where he raised millions for his campaign and the Democratic Party, it passed a protester toting a sign proclaiming: “Gas prices up 91 percent under Obama.”

The Times story reinforced other media reports about House Speaker John Boehner’s instructions to other Republicans to stoke anger over pump prices during trips home to their constituents for the Presidents Day recess.

“This debate is a debate we want to have,” Boehner told his conference during a closed-door meeting last week, according to an aide. “It was reported this week that we’ll soon see $4-a-gallon gas prices. Maybe higher. Certainly, this summer will see the highest gas prices in years. Your constituents saw those reports, and they’ll be talking about it.”

Obama’s advisers fear that the ballooning gas prices will undermine the president’s argument that the economy is improving, according to the Times report.

“White House officials are preparing for Republicans to use consumer angst about the cost of oil and gas to condemn his energy programs and buttress their argument that his economic policies are not working,” according to the Times.

Higher gas prices trickle down to clamp other consumer spending and could curtail the recent improvement in the U.S. economy.

A 25-cent jump in gasoline prices, if sustained over a year, would cost the economy about $35 billion, The Associated Press reported, adding, “That’s only 0.2 percent of the total U.S. economy, but economists say it’s a meaningful amount — especially at a time when growth is only so-so. The economy grew 2.8 percent in the fourth quarter, a rate considered modest following a recession.”

Iran’s saber-rattling about plugging the global oil trade has increased the price of a barrel of domestic oil to more than $103, a six-month high and a rise of about 34 percent since September. That has propelled the increasing pump prices, which already are approaching $4 in some spots.

Although the Times notes that the oil price presents just a modest drag on the economy, it observes that a large jump, along with tensions over Iran and continuing European debt worries, could challenge America’s economic recovery.

GOP candidates contend that increasing prices are part of the Obama administration’s playbook.

“They want higher energy prices. They want to push their radical agenda on the public,” Rick Santorum said at a campaign event, slamming Democrats for pushing alternatives to oil. “We need a president who is on the side of affordable energy.”

The Republican National Committee’s weekly talking points often include rising gas prices among the “Top Line Messaging” for the week. “A recent “Pundit Prep” document cited the national debt, unemployment, and gasoline prices as the three best ways to define the ‘Obama economy,’” the Times reported.

Obama aides are preparing for the onslaught.

“The president is keenly aware of the impact that higher gas prices have on families trying to make ends meet,” White House press secretary Jay Carney said last week.

To counter Republican attacks, Obama’s re-election team in Chicago plans to highlight, among other things, GOP presidential candidate Mitt Romney’s raising gas taxes when he was governor of Massachusetts. “And Obama’s Democratic allies on Capitol Hill are eager to renew a nationwide discussion about tax subsidies to oil companies,” the Times reported.

“House Republicans are very good at using every argument they can to shield oil companies from paying their fair share,” Rep. Steve Israel of New York, chairman of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, told the Times. “They have been relentless and fearless protectors of oil company profits.”

Also in Obama’s counterattack are plans to focus his speeches increasingly on his administration’s actions to raise the fuel efficiency of cars and to open new areas to oil and natural gas development, the Times reported, adding that Team Obama hopes “the moves would counter the accusation that he has stifled oil production.”

Republicans told the Times they are eager to criticize the president as gas prices rise, in part with legislation aimed at increasing domestic production.

“They also plan to use Mr. Obama’s decision to block the immediate construction of Keystone XL, a 1,700-mile pipeline that would stretch from Canada to the Gulf Coast. A Republican bill was passed by the House on Thursday to expand offshore drilling and force a permit to be approved for the pipeline,” according to the Times.

Meanwhile, people are expected to curb travel because of the high prices, perhaps saving up to drive to the polls to vote against Obama.

“You’re going to see a lot more staycations this year,” says Michael Lynch, president of Strategic Energy & Economic Research. “When the price gets anywhere near $4, you really see people react.”

David Koch, the billionaire businessman and philanthropist, says he was the target of 100 credible death threats last year alone because of his opposition to unions in the United States.

The influential conservative, who founded and funds the tea party-friendly group Americans for Prosperity, told The Palm Beach Post that he’s no “bully.”

“They make me sound like a bully,” Koch told the Post, complaining of press coverage. “Do I look like a bully?”

The Post detailed a charity dinner that Koch and his wife, Julia, hosted recently at his Palm Beach home for the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center.

In 1990s, Koch discovered that he had prostate cancer. The Anderson Center successfully treated and cured him.

Koch said he is remaining active in political battles despite the criticism and threats he has received.

He told the Post that Americans for Prosperity is helping Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker, who faces a recall election after taking on public employee unions.

“We’re helping him, as we should. We’ve gotten pretty good at this over the years,” he said. “We’ve spent a lot of money in Wisconsin. We’re going to spend more.”

Americans for Prosperity reportedly is spending about $700,000 on television ads supporting Walker and his reformist union policies.

But the Post notes that Koch and his brother Charles, who share the No. 4 rank in the Forbes billionaire list, have broader charitable interests than just politics. David “holds board seats with 23 nonprofit groups and has pledged gifts totaling more than $750 million for cancer research, the arts and cultural institutions, according to his foundation,” the Post reported.

by Al Fadi, reprinted from a January 31, 2012 thequrandilemma.com article

Islam prides itself with the fact that one of its hallmarks is bringing honor to women by way of protecting her beauty via the wear of Hijab, providing for her needs through marriage, and respecting her freedom by sheltering her from the outside world. This may be acceptable to some Muslim women, but certainly not to many, at least to those who have been born in Western societies or immigrated to the West since they had experienced a vast difference between how they are treated in Islamic society compared to the Western ones.

Many times Muslims propagate negative facts against Western societies for the sole purpose of presenting Islam and its Sharia-bound community as the alternative. Western women often times are used as one of the main objects of such propagation with accusations of too much freedom to calling them sluts and whores, by many religious leaders, for simply living life within the boundaries of their rights and freedom.

To Islam women are not meant to be in public, or to have freedom of choice, nor freedom of expression, nor any type of rights that can cause her guardian to lose his control over her [yes, the use of the masculine is intentional]. After all, how can Islam accept the notion that women can behave in an equal manner as men by way of dressing, or working, or driving, or traveling, or having any sort of authority or autonomy? The Quran claims that women are the source of evil (i.e. Q. 12:28), they are like a sexual field for men to tilt and plant seeds (Q. 2:223), touching them by their husbands during religious rituals is considered a form of ungodliness (i.e. Q. 2:197), they are slaves to men in the time of war (i.e. Q. 70:29-31), men have rights to marry them even if the woman is a child bride (Q. 65:4), they are a degree below men to the point of allowing men to beat them if necessary (Q. 4:34), her witness is half that of a man since she is intellectually more prone to forget and err (Q. 2:282), they are to be treated by their husbands as only another wife not the ONLY wife since men can marry up to four wives at the same time, they are a source of pollution that can negate a male’s prayer preparation (Q. 5:6), they are to be considered a justifiable and acceptable object of lust for men (Q. 7:81), and when it comes to divorce she has no rights whatsoever to release herself from the bondage of her husband (especially the abusive one) without his permission and ultimate authority (Q. 2:228).

The list above is nothing but a sample of a host of other verses where women are clearly degraded and humiliated in a book considered to by holy and spoken by Allah (the god of Islam) himself. Which leads one to ask: if the god who supposedly created women thinks so lowly of them and does not provide any protection for them against any sort of abuse inflected by their society, how then can anyone blame their own family for eliminating them to preserve the honor of the family name, often over accusations that are not substantiated or based on mere speculation?

With honor killing victims as Jessica Mokdad (Michigan), Tater Harun (Germany), Noor Almaleki (Arizona);to name a few. Not to mention the alleged mass murder of three of the Shafia daughters by their father, mother and brother (Ontario, Canada), which can be followed on this link: http://www.foxnews.com/world/2012/01/29/jury-finds-afghan-family-guilty-in-honor-killings/?test=latestnews

In light of all of the above evidence, one can only wrestle with one huge dilemma that demands an answer:

How can Islam bring honor to women when it tolerates dishonoring them for being westernized or at the least for seeking freedom to express their god given gifts and rights?

This is our dilemma that demands an answer!

The writer delineates the difference between the two pro-Israel Republican candidates on Judea and Samaria and the “Palestinian people”.

For those pro-Israel Americans who are still on the fence about which candidate to support in the Republican primaries, this particular American-Israeli would like to briefly scan some of the nuances on the campaign trail.

With the notable exception of Congressman Ron Paul, who has harshly criticized Israel’s treatment of our Hamas-supporting neighbors in Gaza as being “like a concentration camp”, the contenders for the nomination have been considered to be staunchly pro-Israel. All support a strong stand against Iran, including the potential use of military force to end Iran’s race to develop nuclear weapons, but are the candidates really all on the same page on the main issues that concern Israel?

Let’s examine the record. The differences become clear when they discuss “the Palestinians” and the so-called peace process.

Former Pennsylvania Governor Rick Santorum, whose campaign has been struggling recently, was questioned by a young voter about the Palestinians right to an independent state in the West Bank (Judea and Samaria) and Santorum responded sharply, saying, “There is no Palestinian people” and defending Israel’s right to call as its own land won in a defensive war (The 1967 Six Day War).

Similarly, Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich has referred to the Palestinians as “an invented people” that was never a nation, and, elaborating on this at an ABC News debate added, “Somebody ought to have the courage to tell the truth. These people are terrorists. They teach terrorism in their schools. They have textbooks that say ‘if there are 13 Jews and 9 Jews are killed, how many Jews are left?’ We pay for those textbooks through our aid money. It’s time for somebody to say:  enough lying about the Middle East.”

Former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney is on record defending Israel’s right to decide how to negotiate and has said that all disagreements between Israel and the United States should be discussed in private. He also has criticized President Obama for “throwing Israel under the bus” (a nice cliché) and said, “I will stand by our friend Israel” (another nice cliché).

In the most recent debate in Florida, Romney criticized Obama for failures in the peace negotiations, but didn’t criticize the so-called Palestinians. In that same debate, Gingrich blasted the Palestinian leadership for enabling and/or allowing continued rocket attacks and pledged that on his first day in office, he would issue an executive order moving the Israeli Embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem.

The differences between the two leading candidates are actually fairly substantial. Romney has made quite a few positive statements about the importance of the USA-Israel relationship, but has been carefully avoiding taking positions that might change the “land for peace” process (actually – land for a meaningless piece of paper) and the status quo of the “two-state solution” or that might offend the Palestinian Authority. Furthermore, Romney was quite critical of Gingrich for making his “invented people” statement, saying that we shouldn’t “get ahead of our ally Israel.”

After years of American pressure, much of Israel’s leadership is endorsing suicidal positions that would hand over its strategic heartland, in which most of the biblical sites are located, to the Hamas, Fatah, and Islamic Jihadists for an independent state. Is Romney suggesting that a true friend should let its ally commit suicide?

On the other hand, Gingrich has, on several recent occasions, taken bold, right-of-center positions on the Middle East that often defy the status quo, sending the clear message that his actions as president would be based on a historically-correct vision of peace through strength and Israel’s right to its biblical heartland.

The irrational need to adhere to the ridiculous land for “peace” mantra that has never worked should be carefully reexamined by all the presidential candidates. Newt Gingrich has taken a giant step in that direction and he is to be highly commended for it.

7:00 – 8:00: Leon Weinstein – Author of Capitalism 101″

8:00 – 9:00: Stephen Bennett – Of Stephen Bennett Ministries, to discuss Ellen DeGeneres/ JC Penney, California Prop 8 Overturned (gay marriage WILL be reinstated), Washington State approves Bill to pass gay marriage, Stephen and Irene’s trip to London to Debate, “Can One Be Gay and Christian”?

9:00 – 10:00: David Rubin – Former Mayor of Shiloh, Israel to discuss Newt and Romney: Big Gaps on Israel

Like many others who are concerned about this country’s movement toward wealth re-distribution and mediocrity, I am watching the GOP race with a combination of awe, fascination, hope and disgust. I loved Michele Bachmann for her role in the Tea Party movement. I admired Rick Perry’s record as the Texas governor. I praised Rick Santorum for his moral stand. I agreed with 96% of Ron Paul’s domestic agenda – I took an on-line test and was given this score. I liked Governor Johnson (remember him?) and many of his views. I have deep respect for Governor Romney’s Olympic Games achievement and for Newt Gingrich’s budget balancing act with Clinton. I am sure there are many other virtues we can admire or may not like in every candidate. Since we are trying to judge who will be better president based on those virtues, choosing one of them is a bit (or a lot) difficult task. Obviously we need to find a way, a system, a method of selecting the right candidate. Let’s try to do it by using our brains. I hope you know that choosing President based solely on feelings that are also important, can be misleading.

I recently published two books about the uniqueness and the secrets behind an astonishing success of the United States of America.  I wrote those books from the point of view of a person who came from outside (actually from the Soviet Union) and saw this country, its political and social structure with fresh and bewildered eyes. I never thought that the level of freedom and the promise of opportunity could be so great in any place of the world. One book that I published two years ago is called “Looking for Hugh: The Capitalist Guidebook”, another published recently and is called “Capitalism 101.” 

I saw not only positive, but also some negative aspects of life here, but in general everything was so great, so peaceful and my family and I felt so protected, that we closed our eyes on the problems, thinking that they are outweighed by the goodness of this country. Russians in such situations say that even the Sun has some spots on it and choose not to pay any attention to those “spots.”

Of course we were wondering about illegal immigration, congress voting to themselves special rights and privileges, terrible public schools, absence of education of what is great and unique in America.

We met many immigrants who like us came from socialistic countries and they all felt in love with America and on every occasion, when we are gathering to celebrate birthdays or holidays, one of the toasts always is “For this great country of ours!”

Believe me; we are really proud to say “ours.”

When the Soviet Union began to collapse, I went back to St Petersburg, Russia  to spread the word about this great thing called capitalism. I met with Vladimir Putin on several occasions, befriended Mayor of St Petersburg and helped to facilitate a sister-city agreement between the place of my birth (St Petersburg, at that time still called Leningrad, Russia) and my current bellowed residence (Los Angeles, USA).  It was in my living room that the decision of changing the name of the city from Leningrad to St Petersburg was made. To tell you the truth I voted for another name, but lost and now glad that I lost.

I am a theater director by trade and worked in Russia, Israel and in the US. I wrote and directed theater shows and was at a certain point an artistic director of the Educational Theater for Youth in Tel Aviv, Israel. I staged my plays in Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts and in the Los Angeles Theater center. All my professional life I am working on finding ways to present difficult concepts in a simple to understand way. This is what you do if you are an artistic director of an Educational Theater and I think I was good at it.

This experience as well as the abilities that I developed during my tenure in the educational theater came handy when three years ago I suddenly realized that this country is moving in a wrong direction. Very possible this direction looks good and right for some, but for me who doesn’t want to experience the wonders of social justice one more time, it is an opposite direction to where I would ever want to go.

At that point I decided to take a look and try to understand of what went wrong with this country and why. I love American constitution and Declaration of Independence. However if the elected government of this country takes anything it wants from Peter and gives to Paul, then as we all understand Paul will vote for this government again and again. This is something that contradicts the founding ideas and the essence of this country. The theft (taking someone property without explicit permission of the owner) is not supposed to be legal. When it is done without breaking any laws, then the laws are not so good. The laws in the US apparently have flaws.

This is what I found: In America (God Bless this country) everyone can vote. Actually almost everyone. My thirteen years old grandson can’t and he already told me that he is planning to sue the US government for infringing of his rights. I am sure he will find a couple of sensitive attorneys to take his case all the way up to the Supreme Court.

A person who never earned a single dollar, never paid taxes, never served in the army, never contributed to the society in any shape or form, and all his life was receiving assistance from the state (being healthy and in sound mind), all such people can take part in decisions about what to do with the money that others contributed.

Another strange law that I found is called the 16th Amendment to the Constitution and it allows the US government to take from us, the working people, any amount of money they would desire at any given moment. I was told they selected a group they call “rich” and at certain point took up to ninety per cent of their earnings from them.

Representatives of the two major parties would gather around a table, drink sparkling water, smoke (or not) a couple of cigars or without inhaling will pass a pipe with pot around, and vote to get another trillion from you and I. At the same time they would offer to each other to sell their votes for a part of the money they would take from us. Isn’t it fascinating?

Yet another strange thing was an absence of regulations, which would stop the government from spending whatever amount of money they wished, without any consideration of how much we allowed them to spend. That is usually done either by printing new money and reducing value of our savings or by borrowing money that our children would have to pay in the future with substantial interest.

There are several other equally strange things that I wasn’t able to understand such as purchasing oil in the countries that hate us instead of drilling and refining our own, over-regulating every step of our lives and passing anti-business laws.

After I came to these realizations, I suddenly began to have chills. It all resembled to me the well-known country that I was lucky to escape from.

Now let’s come back to the task at hand. How to save us from socialism?

If our biggest task as a society would be an upcoming war, then we would most probably need to choose a proven military leader. If we feel that our next biggest task is to prevent an international crisis, better not to choose a military commander but find a negotiator and a diplomat. In order to choose the best man for the job we need to know what the job is. Sounds simple, right?

However, we usually choose our elected officials exactly like my youngest daughter have chosen her fist car. For two months we were talking about engines, maneuverability, breaks and other safety features. We went to a number of dealerships and she took for a drive at least three dozen different cars. Then she said that she is ready with her decision.

“What it is?” – I asked.

“I want a bright red car” – she said cheerfully.

We bought her a bright red car. Used of course.

It’s quite OK with your first car, especially used, but not so much OK when we are choosing our next leader, commander-in-chief and the savior. We have already chosen one based on emotions. He proposed to unite us and while doing that to fundamentally change everything we love about our country. It is NOT OK to choose a leader without thinking about the problem(s) he is supposed to tackle and the outcome he might bring with his bold fresh ideas.

I am guessing that you are now thinking that you know exactly what the tasks ahead of the next president are, and probably even formed in your mind the words “economy” and “jobs.” Of course you are right. However there is something that is needed to be done before our new president would approach those problems.

Every candidate on the Republican field will lower taxes, will push for energy independence, will offer stability to American businesses and assurances to foreign investors, and will try to repeal or at least to reduce an impact of Obamacare. Some have plans to introduce flat taxes, some want even deeper tax reductions for manufacturers or offer tax holiday for the money made abroad. All of the above will help to stabilize the economy, bring back some of the lost jobs and most probably will move us toward the end of the recession. However, those ideas will encounter tremendous pressure from unemployed and underemployed who are now in a pretty bad condition and are ready to settle for a small unemployment check instead of waiting for a bright but uncertain future.

The very first task of the GOP Presidential contender will be to beat Obama in the war for the hearts and souls of Americans. And this is his first and foremost important initial task.

There are two types of politicians. One is attempting to modify his views so they will reflect views and feelings of as many voters as possible. Another is attempting to form views of the voters, in order to lead them to the future he envisioned for the country.

If we want to beat Obama, we need first to decide which way we want to go, and who among the candidates can perform better than others the task that we will chose.

To build a coalition with independent voters means to move to the center. Since we (social conservatives, libertarians, and fiscal conservatives) are on the right, the candidate that will be building this coalition will have to move to the left. This will mean softening of our stance on many issues including illegal immigration, health care, length of unemployment among others. The coalition building candidate then would be perceived as a “compassionate conservative.”

We attempted this already with Bush the Second and grew our government and the country’s debt by billions. The free markets and altruism do not work well together. The free market society can’t support an altruistic state. American greatness is built on responsibility each individual takes upon himself and his family. We care for others, but we do not want the government to tell us “how much” to care.

Free market defenders can’t pretend that they are more progressive then progressives. It is their left wing game and they will always promise more than the conservatives can even dream of. If we play this game by their rules, they will win. In their secret books they learn that when they can’t deliver what they promised, they can always blame it on capitalism and start crying that this terrible “market” never actually worked and never will. What a bunch of baloney!

In order to go another way, to create a vision and bring independents and some reasonable democrats under the banners, one needs to have a vision. Then this visionary is supposed to be a leader who can articulate this vision so powerfully that people of all walks of life and all life experiences would jump on their feet and cheer. He has to know how to sell his ideas to Americans. Yes, to sell. I used this word on purpose. If you do not know how to sell your ideas, if you do not have this ability to make people want what you offer, if you are not an animated and interesting storyteller, if you do not know how to fence with your opponents and in sharp and short sentences bring the essence of your vision, no one will go to the land you are promising.

Obama can be pushed out of the White House building a tent in the center and convincing independents that new administration will do a better job than the current one without changing much in the social safety net. Or White House can be won by building a tent on the right side and bringing all reasonable still able to think Americans under it. Which task is more doable? I have no idea.

Now let’s examine which candidates are good for either of those tasks.

Mitt Romney looks like a good coalition builder. He knows big business, was a governor of a liberal state, and worked with many nations on preparation of Olympic Games. He was successful in practically everything he did except his 2008 bid for the Presidency.  His reputation as an able administrator is confirmed by his vast and mobile fifty-state election campaign. He is loved by the current establishment of the Republican Party and most probably has lots of friends among democrats. He polls well against Obama and most of his strength comes from his likability among independent voters. He modified his positions on many issues and he will move left or right without much effort. This is his strength and weakness at the same time.

Newt Gingrich looks like the only visionary in the group. Actually Ron Paul also offers his vision but he put himself in an opposition to the country’s majority view on international politics and compromised himself in the eyes of Republicans with his stance on legalization of drugs. He is too far from the mainstream to bring majority under his tent, or he wasn’t unable to articulate his position which also disqualifies him as a unifier. He influenced the debates tremendously, brought new energized people to the process and this is his huge contribution to the race.

Gingrich is the champion of the vision. Can he convince people in something he believes in? Yes, and we saw it during practically every debate he participated in. Can he bring people together and lead them? He proved it several times in his career. Does he have workable ideas? Looks like he does. He balanced the country’s budget four times forcing a Democratic President to accept it.

Santorum is a formidable person with admirable personal convictions. Is he a national coalition builder? I doubt it. Is he a visionary with an ability to lead masses? Sorry, not him. For good or bad but we are stuck with Mitt and Newt.

This is it. The choice is ours. If we chose building a coalition in the political center a bit to the right of the center then Mitt is our man. If we want to bring others like Reagan did under his banners and implement conservative reforms to the fullest possible extend, then Newt is the obvious choice.

But maybe we think that convincing the country that our vision is better is too risky? Or we think that merely moving a bit to the right is not enough to take us out of the slam we are in now? However, I brought you to the point where we have only one question and this shall make our life easier. Or more difficult.

P.S. If any right-of-the center candidate needs an émigré by his side who can articulate in simple terms and with a conviction of an eye witness, why we need to get rid of Obama occupiers and move away from their Marxists ideas that never  worked and never will, you found one. Just whistle.

The White House so delicately catered to the religious sensitivities of Osama bin Laden’s sympathizers that the administration ordered his corpse washed, wrapped it in a white sheet, and made it the subject of Islamic prayers. American Catholics, 54 percent of whom supported Barack Obama in 2008, have no such luck winning the administration’s religious toleration.

At issue is Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius’s bureaucratic mandate that all employers—including Catholic schools, hospitals, and charities—pay for contraceptives, sterilization, and morning-after pill abortifacients through their health insurance plans. The administration recently revealed that the only relief Catholic conscientious objectors will receive is a reprieve until August 2013.

“The Obama administration has just told the Catholics of the United States, ‘To Hell with you!’ There is no other way to put it,” Bishop David Zubik explained to his Pittsburgh diocese last week. “‘To Hell with your religious beliefs. To Hell with your religious liberty. To Hell with your freedom of conscience.’” Zubik’s fellow bishops were somewhat more diplomatic in the language they used last Sunday.

At the behest of Catholic bishops, parish priests across America read a rebuke to the Obama administration from the pulpit at mass. “The federal government, which claims to be ‘of, by, and for the people,’ has just dealt a heavy blow to almost a quarter of those people—the Catholic population—and to the millions more who are served by the Catholic faithful,” one variant of the letter explained. “The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services announced last week that almost all employers, including Catholic employers, will be forced to offer their employees health coverage that includes sterilization, abortion-inducing drugs, and contraception. Almost all health insurers will be forced to include those ‘services’ in the health policies they write. And almost all individuals will be forced to buy that coverage as a part of their policies. In so ruling, the Obama Administration has cast aside the First Amendment to the Constitution of the United States, denying to Catholics our Nation’s first and most fundamental freedom, that of religious liberty.”

The provision is certainly an assault on liberty. But why did it take an assault on the Church’s liberty for the bishops to recognize this?

The state forcing private employers to buy employees health insurance, let alone the more intrusive dictate of what specifically such coverage must provide, usurps liberty. That an unelected bureaucrat, rather than an elected legislature, would issue an order not promulgated in the alleged enabling legislation assaults democracy. The one-size-fits-all order that men, post-menopausal women, and homosexuals purchase health insurance that pays for birth-control pills, RU-486 abortion pills, and other services that they cannot possibly use imposes a choice that none would freely make.

It was entirely foreseeable that yielding control over a massive portion of the economy to the state would result in the state greedily seizing more than was initially given. But many Catholic clergy enthusiastically endorsed the initial legislation. It would be great if non-Catholics rose to defend the rights of conscience that ObamaCare clearly infringes upon. It would have been even better had Catholic Charities USA not endorsed ObamaCare and the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops not repeatedly called universal health care a right. When one endorses an attack on Constitutional rights in the name of non-existent “rights” one shouldn’t be surprised to find one’s own real rights soon under attack. If the bishops weren’t so politically naive prior to the passage of ObamaCare, they would not have had to be so politically courageous in the wake of its passage.

The upshot of the Obama administration’s anti-Catholic edict may ultimately bring harm to non-Catholics as well. Catholic hospitals, youth centers, schools, and homeless shelters serve without regard to religious affiliation. By granting exemptions to religious institutions that serve their flocks alone, such as churches, the bureaucratic fiat may in some cases result in the exclusion of non-Catholics from services they have traditionally enjoyed. Another possibility is six-figure fines for Catholic institutions whose employees refuse to sin at the behest of the state, diverting funds away from the poor and needy toward the government greedy. Such hypothetical situations have precedent. In Massachusetts and Illinois, for instance, the Catholic Church closed down adoption services after the state mandated that it place children with homosexual couples.

What the Bishops said on a Sunday in January will affect how Catholics vote on a Tuesday in November. It may also preface widespread civil disobedience. The bishops’ letter is rather unambiguous on this point: “We cannot—we will not—comply with this unjust law.”

The Muslim world is threatened by religious fanaticism. The Western world is threatened by secular fanaticism.

Both seek to dominate society and to use state power to do so. Both seek to eliminate the Other — for Islamic fanatics, that means non-Muslim religions and secularism; for secular fanatics, it means Christianity and virtually any public invoking of God. The Islamists impose Sharia law; the American Civil Liberties Union and the left generally impose secular law. The Taliban wiped out public vestiges of Buddhism in Afghanistan; the ACLU and its allies seek to wipe out public vestiges of Christianity in America — as it did, for example, in Los Angeles County, when it successfully pressured the County Board of Supervisors to remove the tiny cross from the county seal. A city and county founded by Catholics — hence the name “The Angels” — was forced to stop commemorating its founders because they were religious.

This fanaticism has been on display most recently in the state of Rhode Island. This past Christmas, the governor, Lincoln Chafee, renamed the state Christmas tree a “holiday tree.” Though Christmas is a national holiday, for the secular fanatic, anything Christian — or, as we shall see, anything that relates to religion or God — must be banned from public life.

The latest expression of the secular equivalent of Islamism is the lawsuit brought against a Rhode Island high school, Cranston High School West, for allowing a banner, written by a seventh grader in 1963, to remain hanging on one of the school walls. An atheist student, along with the ACLU, brought the lawsuit and a judge ruled that it is unconstitutional for it to hang in a public school.

To appreciate how fanatical the student, the ACLU and the ruling are, you have to know the words on the banner. So here they are:

Our Heavenly Father

Grant us each day the desire to do our best, to grow mentally and morally as well as physically, to be kind and helpful to our classmates and teachers, to be honest with ourselves as well as with others.

Help us to be good sports and smile when we lose as well as when we win. Teach us the value of true friendship. Help us always to conduct ourselves so as to bring credit to Cranston High School West.

Amen

The idea that this prayer violates the Constitution of the United States is as much a mockery of the Constitution as it is of common sense. Only a fanatic can welcome the removal of such a non-denominational, sweet, moral exhortation from a high school wall. America is indeed as endangered by the ACLU as the Muslim world is by Islamists.

Defenders of the judge’s decision point to the U.S. Supreme Court decision of 1962 banning state-mandated prayer in public schools. The parallel is invalid. No student is asked, let alone compelled, to state what is on the Rhode Island high school banner. But arguments citing the Supreme Court ruling serve only to confirm my argument: that secular fanaticism has been taking over America. The New York State prayer that the Warren Court outlawed 50 years ago was as non-sectarian, as morally uplifting and as inoffensive as the Rhode Island prayer.

Here is it is in its entirety:

“Almighty God, we acknowledge our dependence upon Thee, and we beg Thy blessings upon us, our parents, our teachers and our Country.”

After reading that one sentence, it is intellectually dishonest to maintain that the Warren court’s decision was not an expression of fanaticism. One would have to deny that there could even be any such thing as secular fanaticism. Indeed, if it could have, the Warren Court would have declared the Declaration of Independence unconstitutional for its citing the Creator.

It is no wonder, then, that Alaska Airlines announced last week that it would no longer dispense along with meals its famous little cards with a verse from Psalms.

There are Americans who think that we are a better society without a state Christmas tree, and without high school students seeing a prayer to be kind human beings, and without the Alaska Airlines attempt to elevate American life in a small — and, again, non-denominational — way.

But the Islamist thinks he is improving Muslim life, too, of course.

7:00 – 8:00: Rev. Jesse Peterson – Discussing his agreement with Newt about work ethics for young blacks; also, other discussion concerning “Black History Month”

8:00 – 9:00: Ken Klukowski – Fellow and Senior Analyst for American Civil Rights Union, discussing, “War Hero Blocked From Speaking to West Point About Christianity”

9:00 – 10:00: Commentary