A Free! New Media and Blogging Workshop
SPONSORED BY:
The Sam Adams Alliance & Illinois Review
May 8th from 10:00am-4:00pm
Carlucci Restaurant
1801 Butterfield Rd
Downers Grove, IL 60515
(630) 512-0990
Register Here! (Free for Bloggers)
New media technology is becoming increasingly important to our jobs as responsible citizens. The work bloggers, wiki editors, and social media participants are doing is important to promote government transparency and to draw in more liberty-minded activists and citizen leaders.
In an effort to build relationships, the above mentioned sponsors have partnered with the Sam Adams Alliance to present Illinois Blogger Meetup & SamSphere- a one-day event aimed at helping selected political bloggers network with each other and build a stronger community.
This event is designed to bring activists of all sorts together to find out where their missions and goals align and create a community of liberty-oriented activists who will work together to amplify the pro-liberty message online and offline.
The conference will take place next month on Friday, May 8th at the Carlucci Restaurant in Downers Grove, IL.
For questions, please contact Emily Zanotti, Director of Web Strategies at the Sam Adams Alliance.
Phone: 312-920-0080 or Email: emzanotti@samadamsalliance.org
Usually when a president picks a friend of a big but controversial industry to run a federal department that regulates that same industry, some eyebrows are raised. The press wonders how independent the nominee could be. Senators fret over the long financial relationship between the nominee and the controversial industry...Where all those people who were so worried about the connections of Bush & Cheney to "Big Oil"? Will those who mentioned "Halliburton" with every third breath take notice of Obama's indenture to the abortion industry?
So we are wondering why President Obama nominated Kansas Gov. Kathleen Sebelius to be the next Secretary of Health and Human Services. If confirmed, Mrs. Sebelius will control the purse-strings for the tens of millions in federal subsidies that flow to Planned Parenthood, and she will help steer the nation's abortion policy. It is a clear conflict of interest. We are concerned because she has long been in the pocket of an industry she would be obligated to regulate: Abortion, Inc.
Mrs. Sebelius is a longtime friend of the abortion industry, a wealthy band of medical buccaneers. A doctor specializing in late-term abortions can rack up to $24,000 per day in fees. After a few years, that adds up to real money. And the industry is not shy about using its blood-stained money to buy friends in high office. The good governor has been very loyal to her industrial comrades, fighting even minimal safety regulations considered by Kansas lawmakers and championing government funding of abortions both at home and around the world. (Subsidies boost the Industry's profits.)
Mrs. Sebelius at first failed to tell senators that she received $35,000 in personal and political-action-committee payments from Dr. George Tiller, who specializes in late-term abortions. But of course he does. Second- and third-trimester abortions are the most profitable. Later, it emerged that Dr. Tiller gave another $200,000 to ProKanDo, a political-action committee that torpedoed Mrs. Sebelius' pro-life opponent during her 2002 election bid. So, in a nutshell, she received large sums from Abortion Inc., failed to tell the Senate, and only belatedly came clean.
If she were the cat's-paw of any other industry, Mrs. Sebelius would be in trouble. Yet she appears to be sailing toward a sure confirmation, thanks in part to the support of Republican Sen. Sam Brownback, a fellow Kansan and one-time pro-life leader. The Industry is good to its friends, the way Standard Oil and Big Sugar once were. And it intimidates those it doesn't buy.
Still, we wonder if some senator will be bold enough to ask Gov. Sebelius why the Abortion Industry should not be treated like tobacco, coal or any other special interest loathed by millions of Americans - and why does the Industry get to put its friends in charge of itself? [Emphasis added.]
WASHINGTON—More than a week after President Barack Obama's cold-blooded killing of a local couple, members of the American news media admitted Tuesday that they were still trying to find the best angle for covering the gruesome crime."Meanwhile, conservative pro-life Pepperdine Law Professor Douglas Kmiec, author of Can a Catholic Vote for Barack Obama? was quoted as saying, 'while these brutal and inhuman murders are, of course, wholly inconsistent with a Catholic understanding of the dignity of human life, it's important to remember that 55% of American Catholic voters cast their vote for our dynamic and popular president.'"
"I know there's a story in there somewhere," said Newsweek editor Jon Meacham, referring to Obama's home invasion and execution-style slaying of Jeff and Sue Finowicz on Apr. 8. "Right now though, it's probably best to just sit back and wait for more information to come in. After all, the only thing we know for sure is that our president senselessly murdered two unsuspecting Americans without emotion or hesitation."
Added Meacham, "It's not so cut and dried."
Since the killings took place, reporters across the country have struggled to come up with an appropriate take on the ruthless crime, with some wondering whether it warrants front-page coverage, and others questioning its relevance in a fast-changing media landscape.
"What exactly is the news hook here?" asked Rick Kaplan, executive producer of the CBS Evening News. "Is this an upbeat human-interest story about a 'day in the life' of a bloodthirsty president who likes to kill people? Or is it more of an examination of how Obama's unusual upbringing in Hawaii helped to shape the way he would one day viciously butcher two helpless citizens in their own home?"
"Or maybe the story is just that murder is cool now," Kaplan continued. "I don't know. There are a million different angles on this one." [Emphasis added.]
The importance of abortion as a human right integral to women's dignity, the destigmatization and normalization of the experience as common for women - there are now more than 46 million abortions occurring in the world today (close to half of which are illegal and unsafe) and one in three U.S. women will have an abortion by the age of 45 - and ending the silence and shame that women may still feel cannot be underestimated in the global struggle for reproductive justice and gender equality. When we normalize abortion as a fact of women's lives, and discuss abortion as an honorable and loving choice that helps women to become better mothers in the future, we are showing respect, understanding, and support for the complexity of women's choices.I am particularly struck by that line about "the complexity of women's choices," because of course as we all know, if abortion is "complex," then it's OK. It could only not be OK if it were simply the taking of an innocent, discrete, dependent human life.
So it was with great interest that I read and reflected upon Jacob Appel's "It's Time for an Abortion Pride Movement." This author and bioethicist emphasizes: "The political and social reality today is that pride is a necessary prerequisite for acceptance and equality. That is why the movement is ripe - more than ripe - for an Abortion Pride Movement."
I passionately agree. I also believe that the framework for such a movement already exists and is quite powerful. Talking about abortion pride as a social change movement, destigmatizing abortion - and by extension, destigmatizing women - are concepts I have believed in and fought for all of my adult life. Apple refers to the stigma that abortion still carries: "In contrast to women who have foregone abortion, women who have chosen to terminate their pregnancies are rarely encouraged to take pride in their decisions. This is unfortunate...women who step up to the ethical plate and have the strength to say, ‘This is the wrong time,' or ‘This is the wrong fetus,' should hold their heads up high in the street." [Emphasis added]
Reverend and dear Father Jenkins,You go, Excellency!
Permit me to add my name as well to the long list of Bishops of the Catholic Church who are utterly appalled at your dedication to immorality and wrong-doing represented by your support for the obscenity called “The Vagina Monologues” and your absolute indifference to the murderous abortion program and beliefs of this President of the United States. The fact that you have some sort of past connection with the State of Nebraska makes it all the more painful that the Catholic people here have to see your betrayal of the moral teachings of the Catholic Church.
I can assure you of my prayers for your conversion, and for the conversion of your formerly Catholic University. I am
Sincerely yours in Christ Jesus,
The Most Reverend Fabian W. Bruskewitz
Bishop of Lincoln
[Emphasis added.]
...let me now send a personal message to The Rich in America…But why?
As an American and a patriot, I implore you – I go to my knees and beg you – LEAVE NOW.
Leave. Just go away. Retire to the Cayman Islands or Bermuda or wherever, but do it now, please, while you still have some love for this country. Close your companies, fire your employees, shutter your factories and offices, sell your property, and take all of that somewhere else… better yet: somewhere scenic but poverty-stricken. Somewhere that could use some wealth creation. Somewhere that people simply are grateful to have a job in the first place. Somewhere where you will be appreciated.
You are not welcome in America any more. Take your wealth and prosperity and inventiveness and hard work and vision and insight and bold risk-taking and joy in seeing growth and wealth creation and just go away – right now, before it’s too late. Because if you stay, Joel Berg and Barack Obama and Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi and Barney Frank and Chris Dodd will continue to come after you for more and more and more and they will not ever stop – not ever – until you are forced to flee. And when that day comes, you will go with not with fond remembrances and a desire to return home, but rather a black heart and hard and bitter memories.
So on behalf of those few of us who still believe in the Land of Opportunity, I beg you and implore you, in the name of our common patriot ancestors who worked so hard and sacrificed so much so that we could become so spoiled and ungrateful: take your 60% of the total income taxes and just go away.
Because if you do, then there will no longer be an Enemy for the Left to stick it to. Then, perhaps, the half of the country that pays no income tax might have to put some skin in the game. Then, perhaps, with most of the wealth generation gone we will turn to our community organizers to provide the wealth creation, and the tax dollars, and the innovation. When you have gone the President of the United States, supported by an army of little acorns like Joel Berg, will have to start calling for the rest of us to be taxed more to address the inequality gap.
That’s what I want.
A lawsuit was filed against Eastern Michigan University on Thursday after school officials allegedly dismissed a student from the school’s counseling program for not affirming homosexual behavior as morally acceptable. The Alliance Defense Fund Center for Academic Freedom filed the lawsuit with the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Michigan on behalf of student Julea Ward.This is not the first, and will not be the last, story its kind.
EMU reportedly requires students in its counseling program to affirm or validate homosexual behavior within the context of a counseling relationship. It also prohibits students from advising clients that they can change their homosexual behavior.
According to the Alliance Defense Fund, Ward has never addressed homosexual behavior in any form during counseling sessions with her clients.
The school initiated a disciplinary process against Ward and reportedly said she could stay in the graduate school counseling program if she agreed to undergo a “remediation” program. According to the ADF, the program’s purpose was to change her belief system as it concerns counseling about homosexual relationships and to conform her beliefs to the university’s views.
Given the choice of voluntarily leaving the program or asking for a formal review hearing, Ward chose the hearing.
During the hearing, EMU faculty reportedly denigrated her Christian views and asked “several inappropriate and intrusive questions about her religious beliefs,” the ADF said.
Pressure on Illinois legislators got so high this week with Catholic Bishops putting on a full-court press in at least every parish north of I-80 and probably statewide that the bill to make abortion a fundamental right was not called for a vote.And so they should remain. Chalk one up for the good guys! But just as "attempted murder" is a crime that you can spend years in jail for, so must the legislators who supported this failed bill still face consequences in the primaries 10 months from now.
House Bill 2354 is dead for this year.
Let me tell how this happens.
A majority of the members have taken what is euphemistically called “pro-choice” positions. That's because they are afraid of Personal PAC, the virulently pro-abortion political action committee.
Personal PAC has convinced its strongest supporters to introduce its bill of choice (no pun intended).
The language is outrageous to so many people that a firestorm starts among the grassroots.
People who would not normally take any interest in politics approach state legislators and express their opinion.
Legislators supporting the bill get nervous.
The Iowa Supreme Court this morning unanimously upheld gays’ right to marry.First, as always, congratulations to the gay "marriage" proponents on another victory over democracy, on your efforts to further the goal of judicial feudalism, and on getting the State of Iowa to proclaim to the world that gay is the same as straight.
“The Iowa statute limiting civil marriage to a union between a man and a woman violates the equal protection clause of the Iowa Constitution,” the justices said in a summary of their decision.
The court rules that gay marriage would be legal in three weeks, starting April 24.
The court affirmed a Polk County District Court decision that would allow six gay couples to marry.
The ruling is viewed as a victory for the gay rights movement in Iowa and elsewhere, and a setback for social conservatives who wanted to protect traditional families.
When Jory Aebly was shot in the head, execution-style during a mugging five weeks ago in Cleveland, Ohio, that should have been the end of it. Doctors at the Metro Health Medical Center told his family it was a "non-survivable" injury, according to the hospital's Web site.What's that old line? "For those who believe, no explanation is necessary. For those who do not, no explanation is possible."
But Tuesday, a very-much-alive Aebly was wheeled to a press conference before he went home in what some believe is a true "miracle," possibly good enough to help earn deceased Pope John Paul II sainthood.
"It's one in a million," Dr. Robert Geertman, a neurosurgeon involved in Aebly's treatment, said in a press conference just days after the shooting. "My jaw was on the floor after a day or two of seeing he is hanging on. ... I'd say it's pretty miraculous."
The connection between the 26-year-old's incredible recovery and the late pope came in the form of hospital chaplain, Father Art Snedeker, and a single blessed rosary Snedeker gave Aebly soon after the shooting.
"[Pope John Paul II] promised me that he would always pray for the patients at Metro and he blessed a dozen rosaries with special patients here," Snedeker said in the press conference. "The first night that Jory arrived and I performed the sacrament of the sick, I also asked Pope John Paul to pray for Jory and to protect him."
Snedeker gave Aebly the last of the rosaries that were blessed by the pope.
From then on, Aebly repeatedly amazed doctors with consistent improvement culminating in his release Tuesday, just two days before the fourth anniversary of John Paul's death. [Emphasis added.]
And when a woman becomes pregnant within a loving, supportive, respectful relationship; has every option open to her; decides she does not wish to bear a child; and has access to a safe, affordable abortion – there is not a tragedy in sight — only blessing. The ability to enjoy God’s good gift of sexuality without compromising one’s education, life’s work, or ability to put to use God’s gifts and call is simply blessing.This is the new dean of the Episcopal Church's foremost seminary.
These are the two things I want you, please, to remember – abortion is a blessing and our work is not done. Let me hear you say it: abortion is a blessing and our work is not done. Abortion is a blessing and our work is not done. Abortion is a blessing and our work is not done. [Empahsis added.]
I cannot join with those moralists who inveigh against the Roman emetics in their banquets; still less with those who would forbid the even more benificent contraceptive devices of our later times. That man who can eat as taste, not nature, prompts him, and yet fear no aching belly, or who can indulge in Venus and fear no impertinent bastard is a civilized man. In him I find Urbanity -- the note of the centre.Who'd'a Thunk It Dept? Rep. John Conyers (D-MI) is continuing his plans to investigate vote fraud by Democrats! Now that would be post-partisan. I'd bet he'll be criticized as a -- let's see if I can get this right -- a traitor to liberalism.
Traditional Marriage Supporter: Redefining marriage will reshape society in ways we don't yet know; we do know that the idea of biological parenthood as a quality of marriage will probably disappear altogether, and kids get hurt when that happens.Yup. That looks about right to me. 80% of the gay "marriage" arguments in the comboxes here boil down to that. She also concludes with an alarming -- though familiar -- prediction.
Gay Marriage Supporter: Only bigots oppose gay marriage.
TMS: Do we really want the law to say that children don't need a mother and a father?
GMS: You just hate me and my spouse.
TMS: When something has formed a part of social reality for hundreds if not thousands of years, undoing it may have destructive and harmful consequences.
GMS: You must not know any gay people.
TMS: The point is, why is marriage a social good? Why should the law be involved in people's relationships at all? If the point isn't to encourage people to take care of the children who are the natural and expected biological result of the relationship, what is the law's compelling interest to be involved in marriage in the first place?
GMS: You just don't want my partner to be able to visit me in the hospital.
TMS: Doesn't it concern you at all that we're taking words like "marriage" and "family" and completely altering what they mean, then imposing those new definitions on a society that overwhelmingly votes against gay marriage whenever the opportunity presents itself? Don't you think that's overstepping the bounds of democracy?
GMS: Quit imposing your religion on me. You obviously don't have any secular reasons to continue to deny me the fundamental human right to marry anyone of any gender which every civilization until ours has been too bigoted and backward to recognize as the zenith of human existence.
