October 3, 2022

I'm crossing Justice Alito's line

https://signalpress.blogspot.com/2022/10/crossing-line.html

"Saying or implying that the court is becoming an illegitimate institution or questioning our integrity crosses an important line." --Justice Samuel Alito

Let's make something perfectly clear here. Justice Alito works for me. And you. He does not work for the one-sided political interests he seems bent on representing on the court, he works for the people. We have the right to determine what we consider to be integrity from the justices and we have the right to determine whether the current practices of a government institution contribute to its legitimacy, or take away from it. The justice's job is to rule according to the law, the way it is written.

We, the people, have not crossed any line. But there are justices on the court now who most definitely have crossed lines, plenty of them. They've called their integrity into question, ignored hundreds of years of court tradition is stepping away from partisan politics and then had the audacity to criticize the people who noticed and called it out. At least, some of them did.

October 2, 2022

Christian Nationalism is a real threat to Democracy and to the Church, says Interfaith panel

https://signalpress.blogspot.com/2022/10/interfaith-panelists-sound-alarm-about.html

"I actually bristle every time I hear the word 'Christian nationalism'" said Tayhlor Coleman, a Texas voting rights advocate who was raised Southern Baptist, "because when I look at the folks who are leading this movement, I don't see any Christianity,"

I don't see any, either. It would be hard to discern the virtues and values of the gospel of Jesus Christ, recorded in the gospel accounts and interpreted by the apostolic writers of the New Testament, in any aspect of the movement. Everything it does denies everything Jesus said. It's very difficult to promote and evangelize a faith that holds peace as a core value while stabbing at Capitol police officers with the sharpened end of a flagpole bearing Trump's name and wearing a shirt with a cross on the front attempting to over-run the U.S. Capitol building.

"Christian nationalism has its roots in the dangerous myth that we were founded as a Christian nation and, as a result, we enjoy special favor from God," said Baptist minister Paul Rauschenbush, son of Baptist theologian and Social Gospel activist Walter Rauschenbush. He claims the goal of Christian nationalists is to use the church, not advance its cause, to consolidate power in the hands "of an exclusively political-religious movement."

October 1, 2022

Manchin is praying that the Senate won't be a 50-50 split after the mid-terms.

https://signalpress.blogspot.com/2022/10/manchin-praying-for-end-to-50-50-senate.html

Well, Joe, so am I. I'm praying that no Republican running for the senate in 2022 wins a mid-term election. That's a big request, but it would be the absolute best thing that could happen to the country.

Next to that, I am hoping that Pennsylvania, Ohio, Wisconsin, North Carolina, Florida and Iowa Democrats deliver the goods. A couple of those are long shots, but in five of the six, polling data is showing Democrats running strong and ahead, or neck and neck, or winning in enough of the poll numbers to make it open to the possibility.

If that is indeed what Manchin is praying for, then he is praying to make himself and Kirsten Sinema irrelevant, and I must say, I'm praying for the same thing. And I'm contributing to that end, making phone calls on behalf of the DNC, and planning to vote to help bring that outcome to fuition. I can't imagine that's really what either of them want, given their rhetoric and their manipulative actions of the past two years, but they're thinking of their own self and their shot at getting re-elected. I wouldn't bet on the odds of that happening for either one of them at this point.