In a Surprise, Pat Robertson Backs Giuliani

Riding the Beast: Evangelicals & Politics NEW YORK TIMES [NYTimes Group/Sulzberger] - By David D. Kirkpatrick and Michael Cooper - November 8, 2007 Rudolph W. Giuliani is a supporter of gay and abortion rights who is building his Republican primary campaign around his response to the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. Pat Robertson, the Christian conservative broadcaster, once said permissiveness toward homosexuality and abortion led to God’s “lifting his protection” to allow those attacks. But there they were Wednesday morning, Mr. Robertson endorsing Mr. Giuliani, the former mayor of New York City, as “an acceptable” Republican “who can win the general election.” It was the latest manifestation of the deep divide in the Christian conservative movement over how to balance politics and principle in the coming era after President Bush, who once so deftly brought it all together. Many former Christian conservative allies dismissed the endorsement as an inexplicable stunt. They noted that Mr. Robertson, 77, had lost much of his influence since the heady days of his second-place finish in the Iowa caucuses 20 years ago when he ran for the Republican presidential nomination. “What support he has left,” said Connie Mackey, a vice president of the public policy arm of the evangelical Family Research Council, “is obviously going to be eroded by this very strange endorsement.” Others close to Mr. Robertson said, however, that he had decided to speak out to rebut a threat from other Christian conservative leaders to bolt the Republican Party if it nominated Mr. Giuliani or any other candidate who supports abortion rights. - - - - http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/08/us/politics/08repubs.html?ex=1352264400&en=f9d05f3919019b58&ei=5124&partner=permalink&exprod=permalink FAIR USE NOTICE: This blog contains copyrighted material the use of which has not always been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. We are making such material available in our efforts to advance understanding of religious, environmental, political, human rights, economic, democracy, scientific, and social justice issues, etc. We believe this constitutes a 'fair use' of any such copyrighted material as provided for in section 107 of the US Copyright Law. In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, the material on this site is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. For more information go to: http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.shtml. If you wish to use copyrighted material from this site for purposes of your own that go beyond 'fair use', you must obtain permission from the copyright owner.

Pat Robertson Backs Giuliani's Bid

Riding the Beast: Evangelicals & Politics ASSOCIATED PRESS - By Libby Quaid - November 7, 2007 WASHINGTON - Pat Robertson, a prominent Christian leader and social conservative, endorsed Republican presidential candidate Rudy Giuliani on Wednesday. "It is my pleasure to announce my support for America's Mayor, Rudy Giuliani, a proven leader who is not afraid of what lies ahead and who will cast a hopeful vision for all Americans," Robertson said in a statement issued by the Giuliani campaign. The former New York mayor backs abortion rights and gay rights, positions that put him in conflict with GOP orthodoxy, and has been trying to persuade cultural conservatives to overlook their differences with him on those issues. Giuliani is best known to voters for leading New York in the aftermath of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. Shortly after 9/11, Robertson released a statement in which he said the attacks occurred because Americans had insulted God and lost the protection of heaven by allowing abortion and "rampant Internet pornography." Robertson made no mention of his differences with Giuliani on social issues in Wednesday's statement. "Rudy Giuliani took a city that was in decline and considered ungovernable and reduced its violent crime, revitalized its core, dramatically lowered its taxes, cut through a welter of bureaucratic regulations, and did so in the spirit of bipartisanship which is so urgently needed in Washington today," Robertson said. Conservatives have split in their support for the leading Republican candidates. Kansas Sen. Sam Brownback planned to endorse John McCain on Wednesday. Mitt Romney recently announced that Paul Weyrich and Bob Jones III were on board with his candidacy. - - - - http://apnews.myway.com/article/20071107/D8SOTN7G1.html FAIR USE NOTICE: This blog contains copyrighted material the use of which has not always been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. We are making such material available in our efforts to advance understanding of religious, environmental, political, human rights, economic, democracy, scientific, and social justice issues, etc. We believe this constitutes a 'fair use' of any such copyrighted material as provided for in section 107 of the US Copyright Law. In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, the material on this site is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. For more information go to: http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.shtml. If you wish to use copyrighted material from this site for purposes of your own that go beyond 'fair use', you must obtain permission from the copyright owner.

Israel’s Shattered Trust

FORWARD - By P. David Hornik - December 20, 2007 Is Israel standing up for itself at last? The U.S. National Intelligence Estimate on Iran—particularly its lead sentence that “We judge with high confidence that in fall 2003, Tehran halted its nuclear weapons program”—has caused wall-to-wall consternation in Israel, whose intelligence community is convinced that Iran has never, except possibly for a brief intermission, stopped working on its bomb. On Saturday Public Security Minister Avi Dichter, member of Prime Minister Ehud Olmert’s Kadima Party and previously head of Israel’s domestic security agency, called the NIE an “American misconception concerning Iran’s nuclear weapons, which is liable to lead to a regional Yom Kippur [War] where Israel will be among the countries that are threatened.” This is grave terminology in the Israeli context, referring to the Yom Kippur or October War of 1973 in which faulty or neglected intelligence led Israel to give Egypt and Syria the upper hand by reacting almost catastrophically too late to their attack. As a result Israel suffered three thousand unnecessary fatalities and neared the brink of destruction before eventually turning the tide and winning. “Something went wrong,” Dichter said, “in the American blueprint for analyzing the severity of the Iranian nuclear threat. . . . A misconception by the world’s leading superpower…has to cause concern in Israel and many other countries.” With Olmert already engaging in his idea of damage control on Sunday, saying at the weekly cabinet meeting that he was “asking the ministers to stop giving statements on Iran and the American intelligence report” and “There is no place for private comments by every single minister on such a sensitive and complex issue,” Dichter’s words could have been dismissed as those of a frustrated maverick. Also on Sunday, though, Israel ’s Army Radio reported that many cabinet members share the security chief’s view. Not surprising, then, is the Associated Press report, which also came out the same day, that last week “ Israel … dispatched an unscheduled delegation of intelligence officials to the US to try to convince it that Iran is still trying to develop nuclear weapons.” The report cites Israeli officials saying Israel , for that purpose, “intends to present information classified as top secret for security reasons.” This newfound assertiveness—or desperation—comes just after Israel reached yet-unplumbed depths of submission to America’s perceived priorities at Annapolis where, obeying U.S.-cum-Saudi demands, the Israeli representatives meekly entered the hall through a separate door and accepted Untermensch status. And even that could be seen as just a symbolization of an ongoing situation where Israel passively allows its citizens to be bombarded and its enemies to build up ominous forces on its border so as to sustain the fiction of the U.S.-orchestrated “peace process.” Conjectures that after the Annapolis conference Israel would finally move decisively against the terrorist concentration in Gaza proved wrong as Israel continues to bide time. Last week its security cabinet recommended against a major Gaza operation, citing supposed tactical successes in killing a few hundred Gaza terrorists this year even as the jihad organizations have managed to fire a thousand rockets and over a thousand mortars since the year began, keeping the nearby Israeli communities in a perpetual state of terror. But the real reason for the restraint was “peacemaking”—which means, at this point, ongoing meetings with Palestinian Authority/Fatah leaders who have clearly announced that they will never even recognize Israel as a Jewish state. Israelis who were unhappy with this charade were assured that it was all part of a U.S. strategy, ultimately working to Israel’s benefit, of demonstrating concern for the Palestinian issue and thereby putting together a bloc of moderate Arab states that would stand with America in confronting Iran. It was the NIE that burst that balloon. Now a top Israeli delegation has been scrambled to the U.S. to try and prove that Iran really constitutes the threat that supposedly was the guiding consideration all along. If it is possible to understand the Israeli approach of compliance with its superpower ally, it has long been difficult to understand the lengths to which Israel will keep itself in line. From the time the Second Intifada broke out in September 2000 till Operation Defensive Shield began in March 2002, Israel essentially let its citizens be slaughtered in the streets so as not to ruffle George Bush’s then-perception that the Palestinian territories were sacrosanct and off limits to Israeli forces. Israel has meanwhile gone along with releasing hundreds of terrorists from prison, funneling funds and weapons to Fatah, and periodically lifting West Bank checkpoints even though all these measures lead with demonstrable regularity to fatal attacks on Israeli civilians. Two years ago Israel evacuated Gaza partly, it is thought, so that then-prime minister Ariel Sharon could win a promise from Bush that Israel would eventually retain substantial lands in the West Bank . Today Israel keeps being pushed along in a “peace process” with PA leaders who say openly that they will never accept anything but total Israeli withdrawal followed by Israel ’s inundation with “refugees.” And since the pullout from Gaza , the rocket fire has climbed from a couple of hundred hits per year to about a thousand per year—still without any substantial Israeli response. Israel is now stunned by the perception that the return on all this costly compliance is the NIE—widely believed by the political and security establishment to mean the Bush administration has bowed out of confronting Iran and left Israel to face it very much alone. http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/Read.aspx?GUID=5FD31B12-CCD8-4861-A341-79D5FCD0F0FF FAIR USE NOTICE: This blog contains copyrighted material the use of which has not always been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. We are making such material available in our efforts to advance understanding of religious, environmental, political, human rights, economic, democracy, scientific, and social justice issues, etc. We believe this constitutes a 'fair use' of any such copyrighted material as provided for in section 107 of the US Copyright Law. In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, the material on this site is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. For more information go to: http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.shtml. If you wish to use copyrighted material from this site for purposes of your own that go beyond 'fair use', you must obtain permission from the copyright owner.

Be Alert! Blog is Back

Greetings in Jesus, This is just a quick note to inform that the blog is back after a brief hiatus. I quit posting and began a search for a replacement blog as I have found that I highly dislike and distrust Google. And that is a big part of the problem as Google’s products usually perform quite well and are hard to replace. However, their goal seems to be to track and categorize anything and everything there is. So far, though, my search has not been to fruitful and since the blog functions as an “overflow” and a spot where I can put further resources and information I believe it is a “necessary” evil to use Google at this time. Meanwhile, I will keep an eye out for a better solution and use Scroogle’s search engine when I can. By the way, this picture was posted at Scroogle. BE/\LERT! Scott Brisk