Christian Coalition took gambling money - oh laughter

[donsu]

http://www.al.com/opinion/birminghamnews/index.ssf?/base/opinion/109420292052742.xml

Christian Coalition gambled, and lost

The Christian Coalition of Alabama is in a jam - a mess of its own making. The group that considers itself the last word on morality in politics is on pretty shaky ground right now. And its top leader is squirming worse than a liberal Democrat filling out one of the Christian Coalition's notoriously loaded questionnaires.

You see, it turns out the Christian Coalition, long the leader of the fight against gambling in Alabama, has been fueled in part by money from out-of-state Indian casinos.

-snip-

As reported by The Washington Post, The Montgomery Advertiser and Roll Call, the Indian casino money was filtered through Washington, D.C., lobbyists, to Ralph Reed's consulting firms, to various anti-gambling fights in the South, including Alabama.

-snip-

All of this might be chalked up in the category of strange bedfellows, except for this: Over the years, dog tracks have accused the Alabama Christian Coalition of taking gambling money, and the coalition has hotly denied it. But the coalition steadfastly refused to disclose where its money actually came from. That made the Christian Coalition look suspicious then, and it does even more so now that the Indian connection is coming out.
-snip-
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criminals like to don the christian costume

[Gman]

1. So the Christian Coalition is a front group for out of state gambling

organizations that want to protect their own income from Alabama residents by using the Christian Coalition to fight gambling in Alabama. This is an incredibly cynical use of Christianity to protect secular corporate interests.

Ralph Reed would say, "Uh, I don't see it like that."

I officially nominate this for Lamest Excuse Of The Week:

Christian Coalition President John Giles undertook a weak attempt at damage control. "This appears to be a well-orchestrated attempt to distract from the president during the convention - the timing is most suspicious," Giles wrote.

[southlandshari]

2. Couldn't have happened to a "nicer" group in AL...

The Christian Coalition in Alabama is far more nefarious than its national parent organization. John Giles and his henchmen are an abomination to those who strive to follow Christ's teachings, and there will be little surprise and lots of celebrating with this news that they got their hands caught in the cookie jar on this one.

[Octafish]

3. Pat Robertson Used Some PTL Loot to Buy Diamond Mines...in Africa.

Pat "The Liquor Officer" Robertson is a chickenhawk and a crook.

Dirty diamonds

By Michael Barone

What do Jesse Jackson, Pat Robertson, and al Qaeda have in common?

The answer is: They all have been associated with the bloody Liberian dictator Charles Taylor.

The al Qaeda connection is the one that has most recently come to light. In a November 2 Washington Post article, Douglas Farah reported that "the terrorist network led by Osama bin Laden has reaped millions of dollars in the past three years from the illicit sale of diamonds mined by rebels in Sierra Leone." Al Qaeda has been buying the diamonds at below-market rates in Africa and selling them for higher prices in Europe. Diamonds are easy to transport and smuggle, and diamond transactions are hard to trace; al Qaeda evidently increased its purchases in July, presumably in anticipation of its bank accounts being frozen. The diamonds are mined in Sierra Leone by the Revolutionary United Front (RUF) rebels, who famously hacked off the arms and legs of hundreds of people and built up an army of boys. Since 1998, the diamonds have been sold for cash in Liberia to al Qaeda agents by the RUF's diamond dealer, alleged to be a Libyan-trained Senegalese rebel. There is big money here: A United Nations panel estimated RUF diamond sales in 1999 at $75 million. Farah writes that Taylor receives a commission on each sale in Liberia; Taylor has repeatedly denied this.

Taylor runs a regime that, according to Amnesty International, routinely imprisons, tortures, and rapes citizens for offenses like participating in peaceful demonstrations. Taylor has been the major supporter and arms provider to the RUF and its leader, Foday Sankoh. In a lengthy and well-documented article in the July 2000 New Republic, Ryan Lizza describes how Taylor's regime has had the enthusiastic and effective support of Jesse Jackson. As Bill Clinton's special envoy to Africa, Jackson in late 1998 pressed the president of Sierra Leone to "reach out" to Sankoh–"a man," Lizza wrote, "who built his Revolutionary United Front (RUF) by systematically kidnapping children and forcing them to murder their parents. ... Once children were conscripted, their loyalty was maintained through drugs–they were injected with speed, which numbed their sensitivity to violence and rendered them dependent on their adult suppliers–and violence. When conscripts tried to escape, RUF leaders amputated their limbs. Refugees even accused the RUF of cannibalism." Taylor, who had taken power by starting a rebellion in Liberia in 1989 and building his own Small Boys Unit, had gone to the same revolutionary school as Sankoh.

CONTINUED...

http://www.usnews.com/usnews/opinion/baroneweb/mb_011112.htm

[Joanne98]

4. And Haley Barbour is Govenor........

This is strike two for him. He just recently cut everybody off Medicaid. Sent the sick notices saying "tough luck useless eater". (just kidding) but he might as well have. He's literally killing people by denying them free health care. Republicans love to kill indirectly. Death by negligence. It's legal.
Sorry that was Mississippi. Or was it?