Saturday, October 08, 2005

Scouting the News

Happy Birthday!
First up today, Happy Birthday Alex and Tim! That's right SmartHomeschool and Agent Tim have been blogging for a year now! That is so cool that we all started a blog (unknowingly) within a week of each other! Truly incredible.

Virtue Magazine launched

Virtue Magazine issue 19 is up and running! Please check it out!

Rumor Debunked

Another interesting new tidbit, I have heard the rumor that at a meeting with Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas, President Bush said the following:

'I'm driven with a mission from God. God would tell me, 'George, go and fight those terrorists in Afghanistan.' And I did. And then God would tell me, 'George, go and end the tyranny in Iraq.' And I did,

This has since been proven false. Abbas calls it false as does the White House.

Harriet Miers

President Bush today gave a strong speech in support of Mrs. Miers today on his radio show.

Transcript here

Bush calls Miers a conservative nominee and asks for conservative support

Miers and a History Squinting Lefty

Hehe, this article makes me happy. The guy is obviously a lefty, but he tells us right wingers a thing or two.

"Miers, like Bush himself, is classic Texas conservative Establishment, with the addition of Christian fundamentalism. What I mean by fundamentalist is one who believes in both biblical inerrancy and salvation by faith alone."...

She is enrolled in the Valley View Christian Church of Dallas, which she attended for at least 20 years before moving to Washington five years ago. Among her fellow churchgoers was Nathan Hecht of the Texas Supreme Court, considered second only to Priscilla Owen as that court's most adamant anti-abortion judge."

Sweet! Now this guy either doesn't know his history or looks at it through left wing glasses(only sees what he wants to see) because he uses a Madison quote:

As an 1803 quote attributed to James Madison goes: ``The purpose of separation of church and state is to keep forever from these shores the ceaseless strife that has soaked the soil of Europe with blood for centuries.''

to back up his point. However if you look at this history a little deeper you will find that Madison is right but this fellow is wrong. The founders did not want only on Christian denomination in power at any time. They had way to much of that back in England where you were thrown in jail if you were more Protestant then the king. However they had no intention of removing Christianity from government! They only wished to see that no one denomination could run the government and persecute the other denominations. I cover this topic in-depth in my Virtue Magazine series Christianity in Government. You can find them all here.

(Also see David Bartons article on this issue here

Thats all for now!

Travis

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

On your "Rumor debunked" comment:

The original source of all this was an article that appeared in an Israeli newspaper. (http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/pages/ShArt.jhtml?itemNo=310788&contrassID=2&subContrassID=1&sbSubContrassID=0&listSrc=Y)

Note what it says: "According to Abbas, immediately thereafter Bush said: "God told me to strike at al Qaida and I struck them . . "

"ACCORDING TO ABBAS."

The BBC thing quotes Palestinian Information Minister Nabil Shaath as saying that Abbas said what he says.

So we have one source saying Abbas said what he did, and we have the original source that quotes Abbas himself.

Obviously something doesn't add up. And it could be the reports were false and untrue. But this hasn't been debunked yet. It just means that now that there is a political firestorm brewing over these remarks, the White House and Abbas are finally denying this happened.

By the way, the White House at first refused to comment on the BBC story.

Anonymous said...

And for the record, here is the White House denial:

http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2005/10/20051006-6.html

"Q Have you ever heard the President say that God told him to invade Afghanistan and Iraq and --

MR. McCLELLAN: No, and I've been in many meetings with him and never heard such a thing.

Q Are you aware of the -- there's a BBC broadcast tonight that's quoting the Palestinian Prime Minister and Foreign Minister as saying that they were in a meeting with the President in June of '03, and there are some very detailed quotes here, saying that the President said to them, "God told me, 'George, go and fight those terrorists in Afghanistan,' and I did," and then "God told me, 'George go and end the tyranny in the Iraq'" and so forth and so on?

MR. McCLELLAN: No, that's absurd. He's never made such comments.

Q Were you in the meeting when that took place?

MR. McCLELLAN: I've been in meetings with him with President Abbas; I didn't travel on that trip, if you're talking about to Jordan. But I've been in many meetings with the President with world leaders where he's talked about this.

Q So you don't know about the June '03 meeting?

MR. McCLELLAN: No, I checked into that report and I stand by what I just said.

Anonymous said...

BTW, I just noticed that the reporter notes that both the Palestinian Prime Minister and Foreign Minister have quoted Bush as saying this. I missed that before.

So there are actually three different sources, including one that quotes Abbas himself, that claim that Bush said what he did.