Besides writing here on Faithfully Liberal I spend my time working on local campaigns. That’s my day job, one that I love passionately but it probably would not be possible without Patrick Botterman. I am just one of dozens of young people he helped guide into their first paying gig with a campaign.

Pat had not even met me; he saw my resume and spoke with someone who said nice things. The next thing I know he is calling me; setting me up with two interviews and making sure the jobs would pay enough so I could make ends meet. Soon after I started my campaign life with State Senator Dan Kotowski and State Representative John Fritchey. Two of the most honest, hard working and progressive Democrats in the Illinois legislature.

Pat also worked as the Committeeman of the Wheeling Township Democrats.  Often times he would pay expenses out of his own pocket and now that he has passed away the office is in need of some serious funds. This office is paramount to the efforts of local progressives to elect even more honest and hard working Democrats in the Chicago suburbs. I am setting a personal goal of raising $250 in the next 10 days when the office will be holding their first annual Pat Botterman Leadership Award.

So I am asking you readers to help me raise the $250, scratch that as an incentive I will chip in the first $50 to get us started. Can you help me with $200 in the next 10 days? Throw in a five, a ten or match my $50 to help a local homegrown organization compete in November.

I learned a lot from Pat, could have learned more and owe him my best and honest work. Please consider it.

Share This

Yesterday former Governor Huckabee sent out this email to his PAC email list:

When I decided to run for President, I asked all of you for your help. Boy, did you respond. Thousands of you signed up to be Rangers. You made hundreds of thousands of phone calls, sent tens of thousands of e-mails, put up signs, attended rallies, and did all the other things that made our campaign so successful.

But even more important than your support of my campaign, you have fought by my side for the conservative values that are so important to us. Now I’m asking you, if you haven’t already signed up for “My Huck PAC” please take a moment now to do so.

Huck PAC will rely on our Rangers in the weeks ahead to promote candidates at every level of government. I believe that strong Republican candidates who are passionate advocates for tax reform, a strong national defense, real border security, sanctity of life, family values, less government and individual liberty will help us lead America forward.

I am counting on you to help me identify candidates who hold firm to these principles, promote their campaigns, and financially support their efforts.

Please take a minute now to sign up for “My Huck PAC.”

With deep gratitude,
Mike Huckabee

The emphasis is mine. Do strong Republican candidates that he endorses include those who condone torture? His endorsement of Congressman Linder sure seems so, despite his weak statement from his executive director.

So, I ask you to join our campaign against torture by asking Governor Huckabee to take an unequivocal stance against it. Sign the petition. Join us. Add your voice and make Mr. Huckabee hear us loud and clear.

Share This

For reference, I’m using Mariner Books paperback edition (ISBN-13: 978-0-618-68000-9). Unless otherwise noted, page numbers refer to this version of the book.

Dawkins’ discussion of the Bible and morality is somewhat… weak. This post, therefore, is one that I hope to keep short. What Dawkins wishes to show here, I think, is that people - even people who claim to derive their morality from scripture - do not, in fact, derive their moral systems from scripture, as scripture is full of things that we good modern folk could not admit into a moral system. We can, of course, immediately find one issue here, Dawkins wants to show that people don’t derive their morals from scripture, and yet he only writes of the Bible - never mind the Qu’ran, the Vedas, the Tao Te Ching, etc. I can’t fault Dawkins on this, as I don’t expect him to be knowledgeable about all of the scriptures of the world. However, I will state that, even if Dawkins were successful in showing that the Bible couldn’t be used to fashion a moral system, he would still be a far cry from showing that scripture in general couldn’t be so used.

Read the rest of this entry »

Share This

We have been putting pressure on former Governor Huckabee for the last few weeks through our campaign, and as Pastor Dan noted its time to take it up a notch. This is especially true since we finally heard from Huck PAC’s Executive Director Sarah Huckabee in regards to two simple questions:

1. Will you affirm the Christian faith and the American principles of Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness by signing the Evangelical Declaration Against Torture?

2. Will you require the candidates supported by your PAC to take a stand against torture?

In my multiple efforts to get these easy questions answered by Huck PAC and Ms. Huckabee (the Governor’s daughter for anyone keeping score) my final response from them was:

My dad does not fill like it is appropriate to sign a pledge since he is not a candidate but he is against torture. Sorry for the delay in getting back to you.

First, there are so many things to take issue with on this statement from the Executive Director. I will ignore the typo of fill, which should be feel, because I have my fair share of them as well.

Yes, Mr. Huckabee is not a candidate, as of now. But in a few short months he could very well be John McCain’s running mate for the White House as he campaigns with McCain. We deserve to know more details and to have a pledge from a potential VP candidate when it comes to torture: a heinous act that has been used by the current administration.

Regardless of Mr. Huckabee’s candidacy, his new political action committee places him within a distinct leadership position within his party, his followers as well as a new leader in the Christian Right. Mr. Huckabee’s influence has far reaching potential to be a great leader on this moral issue, an issue that also addresses the sanctity of life that so many in the Christian right pride themselves on.

He is raising money and doing appearances for candidates that have supported the use of waterboarding as I have demonstrated before. Instead of taking the moral high ground and ask them to end their support of this practice in order to gain his backing he has opted to stay silent.

We are calling on him to publicly support the Evangelical Declaration Against Torture by signing onto the statement through a petition. His leadership would be instrumental in bringing about real change in a bipartisan manner. Because this should not be about which political party you belong to, it’s a matter of standing up for what is right.

We ask that you join us by asking Mr. Huckabee to also sign on. You can do so by signing and submitting the petition. The more people that do it the more they will know how much we care he joins us. But Mr. Huckabee would not just be teaming up with: Leith Anderson, Rich Cizik, Joe Carson, Rev. Randall Balmer, Joel Hunter, Becky Garrison, Brian McLaren, David Neff, Chrstine Pohl, and hundreds of others.

I will leave Mr. Huckabee with the challenging words of David Gushee to take a stand:

I believe that no evangelical leader has moral credibility who does not oppose torture unequivocally. I invite Governor Huckabee to sign our “Evangelical Declaration Against Torture” and to help end evangelical ambivalence about this issue. Based on statements he has made on this issue, I am hopeful he will do so. That will be real moral leadership!

So sign onto the petition, make your voice heard, and press Mr. Huckabee to show some real moral leadership.

Share This

After having a massacre of a brutal regime during the monk’s uprising, Burma or known as Mayamar has been devastated by a cyclone. At least 22,000 are known to be dead and more than 40,000 are missing. The catastrophe is overwhelming. Please pray for recovery and aid for the people in Mayamar. Then take that prayer into action.

The cyclone that ripped through Burma left tens of thousands dead and a million homeless–a natural disaster made much worse by the failure of the military junta to warn or evacuate its people.

Now, the government has slowed the urgent process of providing humanitarian relief–so Avaaz is raising funds for the International Burmese Monks Organization and related groups, which will transmit funds directly to monasteries in affected areas.

In many of the worst-hit areas, the monasteries are the only source of shelter and food for Burma’s poorest people. They have been on the front lines of the aid effort since the storm struck. Other forms of aid could be delayed, diverted or manipulated by the Burmese government–but the monks are the most trusted and reliable institution in the country.

Do Something.

Share This

There is a passage in Ecclesiastes that goes like this:

Two are better than one, because they have a good reward for their toil. For it the fall, one will lift up the other; but woe to one who is alone and falls and does not have another to help. Again, if two lie together, they keep war; but how can one keep warm alone? And though one might prevail against another, two will withstand one. A threefold cord is not quickly broken. (Eccl. 4:9-12 NRSV).

We live in an age when politics is rooted in a different principle, the principle of “divide and conquer.” Karl Rove perfected it, and George Bush and Dick Cheney followed in his wake. The result is a polarized and divided people. The pundits tell us that we’re red states and blue states. They dig deep into the polling data and try to decipher our points of division and then highlight them.

When someone comes along, who offers a different vision, he or she is rarely taken seriously. Indeed, they must be put in their place. And so one more time, even though Karl Rove isn’t running things, his principles remain at work. This time, however, they’re being used by one Democratic candidate against the other. That’s unfortunate.

But the reason why I write this the day after Barack Obama won a sizable victory in North Carolina and barely lost in supposedly red Indiana, is that I want to keep before us the need of the hour. As a people, as a nation, as a world community, we must come together. This is not the time for tribalism – in America or elsewhere. Whatever our differences, they pale in comparison to the needs of today. There is an ecological disaster looming. There’s an economic one as well. War and terror are before us in more than one place. The United States has a role to play, but it can’t do it alone. Who we elect as President will set the course for our conversations within the world community. Those who would use bellicosity likely will fail. What we need at this hour is someone who can speak with strength but also with calmness and compassion. Of course, I believe that Barack Obama is that person. But whoever becomes President must recognize that cowboy diplomacy will lead to disaster.

So, let us come together, because together we are stronger than if we’re divided.

Share This

The first amendment of the United States Constitution reads: “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.”

The framers of the Constitution placed freedom of religion at the foremost of our civil liberties providing it with an important part of our nation’s democracy. The authors of First Freedom First: A Citizen’s Guide to Protecting Religious Liberty and the Separation of Church and State, Revs. Welton Gaddy and Barry Lynn, write about the imperative freedom first mentioned and intersection it has with democracy in the United States.

For the past 20-30 years the Republican Party has emerged with a strong conservative Christian bent that pushes for federal government to intervene in private issues as well as push for strict conservative federal judges and Supreme Court Justices. More recently the Democrats have been making advances in reaching out to people of faith. This has been along with a people powered movement on the Internet allowing an opening of progressive religious leaders to speak openly thus pushing to include more moral issues in the public sphere.

It is here that our first freedom finds itself in the crossroads of being endangered by a single and narrow religious view that tries to shape public policy. Well known are past religious right leaders such as Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson who have taken specific aspects of Christianity to advance a conservative political agenda. The authors reveal the negative impact that this agenda has had to our religious freedom as well as our democracy.

The authors take strong issue with the White House’s Office of Faith Based Initiatives as a direct threat to our first freedom because it places the church based programs in a dependent mode relying on federal money to fund itself. What does that mean? It means that the church could potentially be hinder to fulfill its prophetic role as it could fear reprisal of its federal monies being withheld. That is a serious problem for the religious communities to have, as well as our society as a whole. It is the duty of religious communities to be the prophetic voice, holding our leaders accountable to the moral authority of God, taking care of the poor, the infirmed and the downtrodden.

It is unclear as to what the potential growth of a religious left advancing poverty, health care and other issues in the public debate. So as we stand close to the 2008 elections our first freedom stands in the brink. Revs. Gaddy and Lynn place it in our hands to ensure our own religious freedom as well as the sanctity of our nation’s democracy. The book pushes and prods one’s thought on the role of religion in our politics and forces us to take action to protect both.

Share This

Looks like the media is finally understanding that Senator Barack Obama is going to be the nominee. Only took them three months after Super Tuesday and about two months after he won 11 straight contests. But we still await Indiana’s results. Regardless, Obama will be the nominee, it just matters if Senator Hillary Clinton realizes it. The media does, but does the Clinton campaign?

Share This