Daily Kos

Reposted from david78209 by Ojibwa

Maybe if somebody occasionally gave some "Agnostic prayers" at the start of the town meetings in Greece, New York, the plaintiffs in this case would be satisfied.

From today's New York Times
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May 20, 2013

High Court Agrees to Hear Town Meeting Prayer Case

By REUTERS

WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court on Monday agreed to consider whether a town in New York endorsed religion by allowing members of the public to open meetings with a prayer.

Two residents sued Greece, New York, in 2008, saying it was endorsing Christianity, a violation of the Constitution's First Amendment guarantee of separation of church and state.

Susan Galloway and Linda Stephens said the vast majority of prayer-givers since the practice started in 1999 were Christian clergy. Attendees would often be asked to join in
or bow their heads.

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http://www.nytimes.com/...

Reposted from mapamp by mapamp

Imagine losing your greatest leader to the powerful. Imagine that the powerful were afraid that this leader taught a message of love and care for people that were not usually loved nor cared for. The political leaders felt that the people were listening too intently to the message of care for the prisoner, care for the widow, care for the homeless, care for the sick. Love for little children. Acceptance of women. This person was a radical who needed to be shut up and shut up completely. Then imagine that these rulers conspired to bring false charges to put this man to death and were looking for the others who followed him to do the same to them.

Now be one of those followers fearing for your life. You secretly meet together to support each other, but none of you has the wherewithal to put the message of love for all out on the street the way your leader did. Some of you have seen your leader after his death and still doubt whether it was real. Men and women are together and trying to decide how to carry out this love without getting killed.

And then, in a room together while celebrating a religious holiday…

Welcome to Brothers and Sisters, the weekly meetup for prayer* and community at Daily Kos.  We put an asterisk on pray* to acknowledge that not everyone uses conventional religious language, but may want to share joys and concerns, or simply take solace in a meditative atmosphere. Anyone who comes in the spirit of mutual respect, warmth and healing is welcome.

The rest of the story below the orange thingamajig!

Reposted from National Atheist Party by Ojibwa

Wait – What just happened? A roundup of the week in news, May 19, 2013

Oh, you crazy Catholics
After boycotting Boston College’s graduation ceremony because they dared invite Ireland’s Prime Minister Enda Kenny to give the commencement address, Boston’s Cardinal Sean O’Malley threatened the college that it’s him or me…and they went with Kenny.

Why the boycott? Because Kenny is trying to be a responsible human being by advocating for the passage of a bill that would allow abortions for women whose lives are in danger due to their pregnancy. This bill comes on the heels of a woman who was refused an abortion and died of blood poisoning because her dying fetus still had a heartbeat.

Bonus scandal! Kenny two years ago stunned Ireland by publicly blasting the Vatican for its cover-up of sexual abuse by Irish priests.

Fair Labor Standards Act?  What Fair Labor Standards Act?
The House this week voted to allow employers to replace overtime pay with comp time with their shiny new Working Families Flexibility Act. Where the FLSA actually guarantees minimum wage, overtime pay and recordkeeping, the WFFA makes it easier for employers to schedule as much overtime as they want without paying for it, giving workers far less flexibility in their lives as well as denying overtime pay to low-wage earners who frequently have no other way to make ends meet. And we continue further down our new American path of eroding workers’ rights. At least there are still child labor laws right?

Another movie theatre shooting this week…oh wait…
In a brilliant marketing move, Capital 8 Theaters in Jefferson City, Missouri hired actors to portray gunmen at the “Iron Man 3″ premier. John Molock, a retired Army war veteran who suffers from post-traumatic stress disorder, told ABC 17 News the Capitol 8 Theaters stunt triggered memories he never wanted to relive.

To quote National Atheist Party member Ron Millam, “We have Concealed Carry in Missouri. The dude is lucky that half a dozen theater patrons didn't blow his ass away...while also killing and wounding who knows how many others in the chaos. So tell me, Mr. manager Bob Wilkins – does THAT qualify as "entertaining people," as you put it???

Oh, guns aren't allowed in theaters, you say? If it helps you sleep better, go right on believing the "No Weapons Permitted" sign has magic powers.”

Reposted from DKos Sangha by Ojibwa

Good morning!  Welcome to the DKos Sangha weekly open thread.

This is an open thread for members of the DKos Sangha and others who are interested in discussions concerning how we integrate our progressive political activism into our spiritual practice.  If you have observations about the political discourse of the week, or about practice, or about anything else related to walking a spiritual path through the political world, if you wish to share, or if you seek support, or if you simply want to say hello, please do; this space is for you.

If you would like to host a weekly open thread, please let me know.

If you care nothing for spiritual practice and only wish to denigrate and disparage, please do so elsewhere, and respect that this is a community diary for the DKos Sangha.

Welcome to Sunday All Day Brunch. This is an open topic thread so help yourself to the goodies and sit a spell and let us know what is new in your life. I read an article in National Geographic the other evening on space travel. Let us assume that they figure out how to make space travel so that you can easily go places in what would be normal time for you. Where would you like to go?

For the past few years, loggersbrat and I have been organizing the Sunday morning interfaith service at Netroots Nation. The service is open to everyone, of all faiths and of no faith. Some of us find it a centering after such a full conference, some use it to fix their resolve to work for change, some for a sense of communal meditation and affirmation. Each year we have chosen a theme and asked the community for their thoughts and inspiration on that theme. This year I sent this e-mail to loggersbrat and linkage, who is also helping:

I have been thinking about a theme for the NN13 Sunday Service, and I wondered about doing something about belief and nature, belief and science.

As far as I can tell, science and religion began as our attempt to learn about and have some effect on our world; for a long time they were the same thing. The divergence came only a few hundred years ago for the west; I don't know enough about eastern religions. But in this country the religious right (and perhaps other fundamentalist versions of faith) lead to a general feeling that religion is opposed to science, and this perhaps has encouraged the fundamentalist version of atheism.

In any event, the idea of learning about the world and the universe, to understand as much as we can about them, and to take better care of them, are deeply felt by some to be religious values. So I was thinking about asking people for ideas from their belief systems about our relation to nature, and our duty to nature, both in terms of understanding and conserving. Scientists like Newton and Darwin were deeply religious, and Einstein was spiritual in his ideas about harmony in the universe.

Another side of the issue is ethics. Technology in these days tends to develop faster than we are able to consider its ethical application, which leads to such things as atomic weapons, genetically modified foods, lots of other genetic concerns, matters like biological and chemical weapons, etc.

This is kind of free associating, but I would like to hear what everyone working on the service thinks about the general theme, other suggestions, and your own associations if we take this theme and ask for contributions from others.

It's a (fairly loose) starting point.

Reposted from Tim DeLaney by Ojibwa

One of the things I admire about DKOS is that however you resolve—or don't resolve—the title question, you are still part of the community, and your views are very generally respected by fellow Kossacks. A diary with this title might seem out of place on a political blog, but when you think about it the question really has a great deal to do with politics. I could give dozens of examples, most of them obvious. Our friends (?) at Redstate.com generally have a much different approach to this question than we do. But the better we understand each other, the more harmonious will be the democracy we aspire to build. This diary tries to explain the view of this particular non-believer. It is not meant to be an attempt to convert the believer, but rather to foster understanding.

Reposted from Frederick Clarkson by Frederick Clarkson

The acclaimed documentary God Loves Uganda, which depicts the role of American conservative evangelicals in generating vicious antigay campaigns in Uganda will be screened at Netroots Nation.  (Among other venues in the next few months.)

My colleague at Political Research Associates (PRA), Rev. Dr. Kapya Kaoma, an Episcopal priest from Zambia now living in the U.S. is featured throughout the film discussing the role of U.S. Christian Right leaders in whipping up antigay fervor and pushing for passage of the "kill the gays" bill in the Ugandan parliament.  He will also appear on a panel at Netroots Nation Intolerance Abroad: Overcoming Violence and Repression and Moving Toward Global LGBT Solidarity along with other experts including Jim Burroway of Box Turtle Bulletin and Pam Spees of the Center for Constitutional Rights.

The film draws on Kaoma's original research and reporting including his PRA reports, the 2012 Colonizing African Values and 2009 Globalizing the Culture Wars. PRA exposed U.S. Christian Right figures Scott Lively and Rick Warren’s role in the creation of the infamous Uganda bill--garnering major media.

Reposted from Lollardfish by Ojibwa

Cardinal Sean O'Malley, archbishop of Boston, is boycotting Boston College's graduation on Monday. Why? BC is honoring the Irish Prime Minister Enda Kenny, and Kenny is sponsoring an abortion bill in Ireland. An Irish woman recently died because doctors wouldn't terminate a miscarrying pregnancy, and Kenny wants to make sure this never happens again.

Citing absolute moral principles, O'Malley claims he has to absent himself.

I just published an essay at The Atlantic drawing out the ways in which O'Malley's principles are not so absolute, abut are in fact inconsistently applied - mostly to benefit Republicans. Here are a few quotes from the article, then, if you like, please go read the whole thing. I'll be delighted to engage in discussion here, at my blog, or at the article online.

One goal, not stated explicitly in the article, is to draw out the extent to which the Council of Bishops operates as a Republican think tank, to the detriment of all the great liberal Catholics I know and love.

Key quotes below the fold. Thanks for reading.

Welcome to your Fuzzy Friday open thread,

Last week I shared with you a lot of words written in one of my favorite places. This week I'll just stifle my fingers and let my camera do the talking as it walks you through that trip to the Giant Mountains. Below the spiffy ginger hairball, you'll find several detailed photos of creepy crawlies, a couple of wooly lambies, horsies, a few broad landscapes-- taken in the forests and meadows of the green mountains along the Czech / Polish border.

Somebody, please dim the lights ...

This is our periodic call for volunteers to write a D'var Torah diary over the coming weeks.  You don't have to be a rabbinical scholar - as far as I know none of us are - and you don't even have to be Jewish.  If you haven't written one yet, why not give it a try?  Here is the schedule for the next few weeks (I've translated the name of each parshah, except for the two named for people):

May 25:   Torah reading - Behalotecha (when you set up) Numbers chapters 8 to 12.  Haftarah - Zechariah 2:14 to 4:7.  charliehall2

June 1:  Torah reading - Shelach Lecha (send for yourselves) Numbers chapters 13 to 15.  Haftarah - Joshua chapter 2. Ramara

June 8:  1st Torah reading - Korach, Numbers chapters 16 to 18
Second Torah reading Numbers 28: 9-15.  Haftarah - Isaiah chapter 66.  Eowyn9

(Note:  This Shabbat coincides with Rosh Hodesh Tammuz, the first day of the new month of Tammuz.  The first day of each month is a very minor (except for Rosh Hashanah) holiday. Numbers 28: 9-15 is read in synagogue every Rosh Hodesh, and Isaiah chapter 66 is chanted every Shabbat that coincides with Rosh Hodesh.  The regular Haftarah, which is preempted, is 1 Samuel 11:14 to 12:22).

June 15:  Torah reading - Chukkat (the ritual law) Numbers chapters 19 to 22:1.  Haftarah - Judges 11:1 to 33.  quarkstomper

June 22:  Torah reading Balak, Numbers 22:2 to 25:9.  Haftarah:  Micah 5:6 to 6:8.

A friend has rediscovered some of his military buddies, and they chat on line. The conversation has veered to one person who was injured in a firefight. One of the group commented, "I'm not superstitious" "but" he was glad when the injured person left the unit, because he had been injured before "and that kind of guy just brings down bad luck, don't want to be around him."

Apparently that type of thought train is common among combat veterans- I am surviving because I am lucky/skilled/tough and I don't want to be around people who are unlucky/unskilled/weaker because they may drag me down with them.

I have much compassion for the combat vet- getting scared shitless week after week tweaks your mind. But that is not how karma works