Pope's comments are saddening and painful to millions of Catholics

WASHINGTON -Human Rights Campaign President Joe Solmonese made the following statement today in reaction to Pope Benedict's anti-gay comments regarding marriage. In talking about marriage equality the Pope referenced "pseudo-matrimonies" and said, "Matrimony and the family are not, in reality, a casual sociological construction or the fruit of specific historic and economic situations."

"It is unfortunate that the Pope would choose so early in his pontificate to sweepingly condemn so many faithful Catholics. There is a long Biblical tradition of showing love and compassion for all. It is from that tradition that so many fair-minded Catholics want to see their Pope speaking. It's sad that he's choosing to ignore that tradition and to divide his followers."

"No one in the fight for marriage equality is asking any church to perform or recognize these marriages. What we're asking for are equal rights and responsibilities under the law. There are millions of gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender Catholics who should feel welcomed by their Church. Today they do not."

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When is Someone Going to Toss Rumsfeld into a Cage?

If you want to ensure that the media doesn't cover an important political story, send out a press release on a Friday, preferably at the end of the day. By the time reporters return on Monday, the story will be old news and will either be buried deep within a newspaper or not covered at all.

That’s what the Pentagon brass is praying for.

At the end of the day Friday, the Pentagon confirmed a pattern of widespread abuse of the Muslim holy book, the Quran, by military personnel dating back two and a half years. Releasing the report when most beat reporters have left for the weekend was a calculated move by White House and Pentagon spin doctors to control media coverage of the explosive report.

Where’s the outrage?

Imposing minority views

Senator Bill Frist and the Bush White House seem to share strongly held minority political viewpoints that they are trying to impose on the majority of American citizens. Both seem to be abusing their positions of political power to “rule over” Americans instead of “representing” Americans.

Frist is willing to permanently divide the Senate by attacking long-standing Senate traditions in order to impose radical, Right Wing judicial nominees selected by the Bush White House. Although Bush has been able to get Senate approval for hundreds of judicial nominees, a handful of his nominees hold extreme legal views that would prevent them from giving a fair hearing to workers, consumers, the poor and powerless.

Rev. Rob Parsley

Rev. Rob Parsley is senior pastor of World Harvest Church in Canal Winchester, Ohio and founder of the Center for Moral Clarity with a following of 12,000 members and a Television program carried by 1400 stations.

Rev. Rod Parsley is showing himself to be a very dangerous man during these very first times that Christians, Muslims, and Jews are meeting with each other discussing the interest of human life; the global situations for all people, offering support and asking for help from each other aiming for all to support one agenda, and respect each other as human beings and not by race, color, gender, handicap, and religion.

Petro Wins Tainted Endorsement

"To regulate what the people are allowed to hear about in an election is worryingly reminiscent of communistic behaviors not American freedoms."

Cleveland, OH – Jim Petro's receipt of the Delaware County GOP endorsement isn't all that it could be.  It is tainted by the exclusion of one republican candidate for Governor.

The Delaware County Republican party specifically excluded Pete Draganic from speaking at the June 6th event.  Perhaps they are afraid of the impact that a grassroots candidate with people appeal will have on the primary election.  Maybe they are insipidly content with the establishment candidates who have been at the helm while Ohio has remained beached.

Pete Draganic has spoken and will speak at other such events alongside the other gubernatorial candidates.  It is only Delaware County that has intentionally and systematically excluded him from participation in their event.

The Pete Draganic campaign, supporters of Draganic and other GOP party leaders had urged the Delaware County GOP to reconsider their decision to not fairly include their candidate but to no avail.

Former Army Sec, Enron VP, Thomas White Wants Gov't Funding For New Energy Project

Beware. This could be your tax dollars at work.

The federal government may guarantee hundreds of millions of dollars in loans to help a former energy executive who publicly admitted he had no idea that the division he once ran cooked its books and who is now trying to secure funding for a new energy company he started with three ex-colleagues.

Yes, Thomas White, the former vice chairman of Enron Energy Services and one-time Secretary of the Army, who testified before the U.S. Senate more than two years ago that he was clueless about the tactics the employees who worked for him used to manipulate electricity prices in the California power market in addition to the massive losses EES—under his leadership—hid in an effort to keep its parent company, Enron Corp, temporarily afloat, is back in the energy business and this time he’s looking for a handout. The federal government may guarantee hundreds of millions of dollars in loans to help a former energy executive who publicly admitted he had no idea that the division he once ran cooked its books and who is now trying to secure funding for a new energy company he started with three ex-colleagues.

Ohio State Students Support Plaintiff in Case Alleging University Wrongdoing in Rape Case

On June 6, members of a student organization at The Ohio State University sent the president of the school over 500 letters requesting that the university admit to failing to respond appropriately to a rape case in 2002.

"You, like a person, should have the integrity to stand up and admit when you've made a mistake," said Jennifer Yoder, co-chair of Women and Allies Rising in Resistance, a student organization dedicated to fighting violence against women.

Yoder addressed a group of around 30 at a press conference held for the letter send-off. University officials hovered in the back of the room, and a camera was sent from university relations to record the event. University spokeswoman Elizabeth Conlisk asked for a copy of Yoder's speech, and headed to a back room to speak off the record to reporters, declining comment on the lawsuit.

In 2002 on OSU's campus, a student named Jeremy Goldstein sexually violated another student. OSU's response, after finding him in violation of OSU's sexual misconduct policy, was simply to move him to another dorm, alerting no one in the new or old dorm as to the reason

Friedman's imaginary India

Duck and cover, fellows, Thomas Friedman's back in India, and the mysterious subcontinent exercises its usual sorcery on the wandering pundit, eliciting paragraphs of ecstatic drivel, as it has from so many New York Times men.

My favorite remains a post-Christmas dispatch, published on Dec. 27, 2002, by Keith Bradsher, the New York Times' resident correspondent in India at the time. It was a devotional text about neoliberalism's apex poster boy at the time, Chandrababu Naidu, chief minister of the state of Andhra Pradesh, Time's "South Asian of the year."

After composing a worshipful resume of Naidu's supposed achievements, Bradsher selected for particular mention a secret weapon that the canny reporter deemed vital to Naidu's political grip on Andhra Pradesh. "Naidu and his allies," Bradsher disclosed to NYT readers, "speak Telugu, a language spoken only in this state and by a few people in two adjacent states." What Bradsher was saying was that Naidu spoke the same language as the 70 million other inhabitants of Andhra Pradesh. It was as though someone ascribed Tony Blair's political successes in Britain to his command of English.

The Hyper Rich

AUSTIN, Texas -- David Cay Johnston, the invaluable New York Times reporter who specializes in our tax system, has come up with some staggering figures on what he calls "the hyper-rich," the wealthiest one-thousandth of the population, and their taxes.

-- "The share of the nation's income earned by those in this uppermost category has more than doubled since 1980. ... The share of income earned by the rest of the top 10 percent rose far less, and the share earned by the bottom 90 percent fell."

-- "Under the Bush tax cuts, the 400 taxpayers with the highest income -- a minimum of $87 million in 2000, the last year for which the government will release such data -- now pay income, Medicare and Social Security taxes amounting to virtually the same percentage of their incomes as people making $50,000 to $75,000."

-- "Those earning more than $10 million a year now pay a lesser share of their income in these taxes than those making $100,000 to $200,000."

New Book: Did George W. Bush Steal America's 2004 Election?: Essential Documents

Did George W. Bush Steal
America’s 2004 Election?
ESSENTIAL DOCUMENTS
Edited by Bob Fitrakis, Steve Rosenfeld and Harvey Wasserman
Preface by Rev. Jesse Jackson

“In contrast to the deadly silence of the media is the silent scream of the numbers. The more you ponder these numbers, and all the accompanying data, the louder that scream grows.”
—Robert C. Koehler, Tribune Media Services

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