Politics & Society

Criticism of Obama from the Left

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I haven’t been able to write anything lately. Honestly, I don’t know what I have to say that is positive at this point. It’s demoralizing to watch what should have been a Democratic presidency disintegrate. Rabbi Michael Lerner called for a primary challenge to Obama back in December – one of the few voices boldly calling for that – and Obama’s missteps have only gotten worse since then. Over the last week or so, I have read more Left-wing criticism of Obama than I ever have.

General News

Opposition to Gambling: From Right to Left

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When I was a little girl, my mother made me return my school-issued raffle tickets to my third-grade teacher and tell her my parents don’t believe in gambling. It was a hard thing to do at the time, but I believe it built character. It also left me with a deep-seated opposition to legalized gambling. While I am not as absolutist about it as my mother, I just do not believe that it is right to look to gambling as a way to solve our social problems, whether it is school funding or a lack of jobs. I have a lot of strong beliefs.

General News

Mobilizing the Base: The Importance of Voter Registration

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The Christian Right is already starting its Get Out the Vote Campaign, and the Religious Left should be doing the same. The right-wing Faith and Freedom Coalition (FFC) is calling on conservative churches to get people registered to vote:
Are you sure all your friends, family members and fellow church attendees are actually registered to vote? You can fix that. Sadly, about half of U.S. churchgoers still aren’t registered to vote. That means millions of conservative people of faith and Tea Party friendly voters are forfeiting their voice at election time.

Christianity

Should a Submissive Wife Run for President? The Case of Michele Bachmann

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In the Christian Bible it says, “Wives, submit to your own husbands, as to the Lord. For the husband is head of the wife, as also Christ is head of the church; and He is the Savior of the body. Therefore, just as the church is subject to Christ, so let the wives be to their own husbands in everything” (Ephesians 5:22-24). Michele Bachmann says she is a Biblical literalist and claims to be a submissive wife. As documented on the Slate website,
In a speech at a mega-church in the Minneapolis area back in 2006, Michele Bachmann explained her decision to pursue tax law.

General News

Right-Wing Extremism: From Norway to the U.S.

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The shocking acts committed in Norway by Anders Behring Breivik put right-wing extremism back on the radar of threats we should be concerned about. One might refer to him as a right-wing Christian terrorist. While I believe that Breivik violated the tenets of Christianity when he engaged in terrorism in Oslo and massacred children at a Labour Party youth camp, he explicitly claims the mantel of Christianity, believing he acts to defend European Christendom from Muslim immigrants and multiculturalism. Thus he is similar to “Islamic” terrorists, who violate the principles of Islam yet explicitly claim to be acting in the name of Islam. If we use the religious label in one case, we should probably use it in both cases.

Gender and Sexuality

Opposing Free Contraceptives? Does the Christian Right Want to Lower the Abortion Rate or Not?

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There was good news on the front page of the New York Times this week. Apparently, “a leading medical advisory panel recommended on Tuesday that all insurers be required to cover contraceptives for women free of charge as one of the several preventive services under the new health care law,” and the Obama administration is “inclined to accept the panel’s advice.” Even better, no Congressional approval is required. As Senator Barbara Mikulski put it, “We are one step closer to saying goodbye to an era when simply being a woman is treated as a pre-existing condition. We are saying hello to an era where decisions about preventive care and screenings are made by a woman and her doctor, not by an insurance company.”

General News

Feminism, Gender Politics, and the Budget

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Do feminist organizations have anything to say about the battle over the debt ceiling? If they do, it certainly hasn’t gotten much coverage. It seems that they should, since many of the budget cuts proposed by the Republican Party and the Obama Administration will slash funding for programs that meet human needs (and employ women). Well, as it turns out, feminist organizations do have something to say about the budget. The National Organization for Women (NOW), for example, makes the following point:
Very soon, members of Congress will reach an agreement on how to reduce the federal deficit.

General News

President Obama Could Use 14th Amendment To End Debt Ceiling Crisis!

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The good news is that President Obama has the power to end the potentially disastrous battle over raising the debt ceiling! The bad news is that he has yet to act on it. If Obama could end this crisis, why wouldn’t he? Why would he instead propose taking money out of the economy during a recession by cutting spending and raising taxes? This will only make things worse, which is obvious if you know anything about the basic principles of Keynesian economics.

Christianity

The Christian Right on Gay Marriage in New York

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Since I monitor the Christian Right for Tikkun Daily, I had to ask myself this week: What does the Christian Right (CR) think about the recent decision of the New York legislature to allow same-sex couples access to civil marriage? Their websites were actually less focused on this issue than I thought they would be, but those who did comment seemed to offer two major lines of attack. The first argument, advanced by the National Organization for Marriage (NOM), Family Research Council, and others, says the people of New York don’t want gay marriage and so the legislature shouldn’t have legalized it. Since we claim to be a democratic society, this makes sense as an argument. However, this criticism is not actually the principled argument that it at first seems to be because Christian Right spokespeople appeal to the will of the majority only when it serves their purposes.

Politics & Society

Torture is Still Wrong. Period.

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I hate to keep repeating myself, but the issue won’t go away. Torture is morally wrong, and it is clearly prohibited by international and American law. Thus, I find it shocking that Bush, Cheney, and Rumsfeld openly admit to authorizing torture, and that they do so with impunity. And if Khalid Sheik Mohammed and Abu Faraj al-Libbi — who allegedly provided information that helped us locate Osama bin Laden — were prisoners of war, then their torturers committed war crimes. Now, in the wake of bin Laden’s death, right-wing ideologues are once again defending the use of torture.