Religion

Over the course of the last few months, Rep. Keith Ellison, one of two Muslim members of Congress, has been cherry-picking the Pledge of Allegiance in an attempt to portray prominent Republicans as bigoted islamophobes.  Earlier this year, Ellison responded to the Peter King hearings on the radicalization of American Muslims by saying that conservatives believe in liberty, but are against the…

How far would a New York sportswriter get in his career if he mocked a black liberal football player for sounding like he was playing without a helmet (brain-damaged)? New York Daily News columnist Mike Lupica certainly feels safe trashing former NFL wide receiver David Tyree for opposing gay marriage: On the sports pages we get the ex-Giant, David Tyree, who once made the greatest catch in…

NBC barely covered the Thursday arrests of two Islamists in a planned terrorist attack on a military facility in Seattle. The network didn't cover the breaking news at all on Thursday's Nightly News, and devoted only 17 seconds to it on Friday's Today Show. Thursday's CBS Evening News had a minute-long report on the arrests, while ABC had full reports on the arrests on World News and GMA.…

Writing today at the Chicago Tribune's "Seeker" religion blog, "Friendly Atheist" Hemant Mehta explained why he's angered by admonitions to not hold a presidential candidate's religion against him or her (emphasis mine):

CNN's Belief Blog contributor Jonathan Dudley offered the same tired liberal arguments against a Biblical defense of traditional marriage in a June 21 piece. The same writer who satirically argued that heterosexuals should not be allowed to raise children grilled the Biblical argument as being "riddled with self-serving double-standards." "I also don't doubt that those who advocate gay…

Somehow when I think of "old-time back-room politics" I don't associate it with important debates about the definition of marriage and the safeguarding of religious liberties. But apparently AP's Michael Gormley does. Here's how he opened his June 21 story which the Washington Post ran on page A2 (emphasis mine):

As the New York state legislature debates authorizing same-sex marriage, some Republican legislators want to ensure that Empire State business owners in the hospitality industry, such as caterers and florists, could refuse to lend their services to a same-sex couple hoping to hire them without being wrung out to dry in court for discrimination. In response to this development, USA Today's…

New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd is a nominal Catholic. She doesn’t believe at all in the church’s teaching that homosexuality is a sin. When Timothy Dolan, the Archbishop of New York, opposes “gay marriage” in New York, the best Dowd could do in her Saturday column was call him the “Starchbishop” and drag out (repeatedly) the sexual abuse scandal of the 1960s and 1970s. If this kind of…

UPDATE AT END OF POST: O'Donnell contacts NB to clarify poll numbers. CBS's new chief White House correspondent said this weekend that Republicans are more uncomfortable with a Fox News commentator as presidential candidate than they are a Mormon. She claimed on "The Chris Matthews Show" she found this information in the crosstabs of a recent NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll (video follows…

As Noel Sheppard reported earlier, in the show-opening feature of its coverage of the final round of the US Open golf championship today, NBC--twice--edited out the words "under God" from its clip of school children reciting the Pledge of Allegiance. Clearly many Americans were offended and let NBC know about it.  Because later in the broadcast, host Dan Hicks issued an apology on behalf of…

On Saturday, the Washington Post’s religion page inside the Metro section highlighted a pro-life cause: what may be the only Jewish crisis-pregnancy center in the country, Erica Pelman’s group In Shifra’s Arms (ISA). Debra Rubin’s story for the Religion News Service relayed both sides and noted both Jewish law and Jewish public opinion. Liberal rabbis have railed against ISA, even for using the…

At a congressional hearing on Muslim radicalization in U.S. prisons, Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee (D-Texas) said that investigators needed to analyze Christian militants in America because they too might try to “bring down the country.”

With Rep. Peter King (R-N.Y.) holding a hearing on the radicalization of Muslim inmates in U.S. prisons, MSNBC's Thomas Roberts this morning set out to discredit the premise of the proceedings by interviewing Minnesota Democrat and practicing Muslim Rep. Keith Ellison. Ellison, Roberts reminded viewers of MSNBC's 11 a.m. Eastern hour of live news coverage, provided tearful testimony at a…

I'm going to sit back and let our readers run with this one.  On his MSNBC show tonight, Cenk Uygur said that "the Republican vision of Jesus" is "to tell the poor and needy to pound sand." Uygur offered his twisted theological take in commenting on a GOP proposal to trim allocations to a certain welfare program. View video after the jump.