January 26, 2008 – The Atheist Lyricist Who Put the Rainbow in the Wizard of Oz
50 members of congress have gotten together, at the behest of (the laughable) ACLJ (founded by Pat Robertson, who has managed to leverage a barely average ability in televangelism into an influential religious based series of businesses. If his followers would just quit giving him money, maybe he’d finally go broke and we’d be finished with him) to respond to the lawsuit requesting the removal of under god from the pledge of allegiance.
As ill founded as I think FFrF vs. Congress is, I find it hard to believe that an infinite number of congress critters could find 80,000 Americans who gave a damn one way or the other about the contents of the pledge, let alone 50. I think all 50 of those members should be ashamed of themselves for letting themselves be manipulated like this. This pandering to the Religious Right has to stop.
This is the second appearance for Ernie Harburg on the show, talking about his father Yip Harburg, and the new Biography Who Put the Rainbow in the Wizard of Oz. His first appearance was on the first episode of the show.
January 27, 2007 – The Religious War Against Women: Ellie Smeal
Hard to believe that it’s only been a year since the currently endless road to the White House election cycle started. It feels like it’s been at least 10 years. The show starts with a clip from the Daily show (catch it when I can) lambasting Sam Brownback (who?) for his stance on the importance of religious belief in the selection of government officials.
I mean, when I picture a zoning board that doesn’t understand that Christ gave His life for our sins, I can’t imagine how it could regulate land use within a mixed residential slash industrial zone.
John Stewart
But then the progressive political dogma shows up again. I know that Bush, when he’s talking about school choice, thinks he’s talking about giving tax money to private religious schools. But Annie Laurie Gaylor should know better, she’s smarter than he is (a box of hammers is smarter than he is) a simple scan of private schools in your area will probably turn up several schools which are not religious in nature, most of which (if you live in a large city) will produce students of a superior caliber than the more costly government schools.
In Austin there are no less than 10 Montessori schools. And while Maria Montessori was Catholic, the schools that follow her methods are generally progressive in nature; that is, there is no religious teaching in the schools
It’s funny, the only time I’ve experience a problem with religion in the schools has been when my children have been in the public school system. I’ve had to intervene when the schools have tried to impose a moment of silence or lead prayers as well as mandating pledging, or the time when the son’s charter school was actually housed in a Catholic church. The Montessori years, for both of them, were trouble-free when it came to religion.
and the Montessori schools are just one type of private school in the average metropolitan area. If we’re going to cast aspersions here, I think the blind insistence that public schools are the only schools free from religion is a dangerously dogmatic opinion, and does a disservice to those parents and teachers who seek to be freed from the restrictions placed on them by heavy handed bureaucrats who have an agenda separate from simply educating children. I could go on, but then I’ve already said what needed to be said.
Ellie Smeal was on to talk on the issue of abortion on the anniversary of Roe. 70,000 women die each year from botched abortions. I wish they had stayed on the subject of family planning, rather than wandering around various issues related to feminism; too much material for a half hour interview. It’s a travesty, what’s been done to limit family planning all over the world, including in the US.
The discussion of the crimes of the Taliban against women was illuminating.
