Posts Tagged ‘ensign’

Sanford and Ensign Plead Guilty to Tax Fraud

Thursday, July 23rd, 2009

Well, that’s what the headline should read.

The Chicago Tribune reported yesterday that a major tax scam had finally been “exorcised.”

Apparently, banker George Michael’s $3 million mansion that he claimed was a member church of the Church of Spiritual Humanism was initially deemed exempt from its $80,000 tax burden before the Illinois Department of Revenue decided that it was a sham.

It was a sham because some guy got himself clergified by an online church, and then claimed that his mansion was really a church, and since he had a few buddies over (in a “congregation”), that justified the exemption. How dare some rich guy in Illinois try to get away with scamming the government like that!

In other news, Senators Ensign, Sanford, and others are happily residing in their C Street frat house mansion, I mean “church,” which is, of course, tax exempt.

What the fuck?

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Posted in Activism, Government, Law, Religion | 3 Comments »

Sanford and Ensign Should be Put to Death

Thursday, June 25th, 2009

According to “God’s Law.”

During Republican South Carolina Governor Mark Sanford’s teary apology to his state, his family, his mistress, and others, he repeatedly made reference to “God’s Law.” In this case, he craftily manipulated the definition to be about self-control rather than an actual serious punishment.

But I’m here because if you were to look at God’s laws, in every instance it is designed to protect people from themselves. I think that that is the bottom line of God’s law. It is not a moral, rigid list of do’s and don’ts just for the heck of do’s and dont’s, it is indeed to protect us from ourselves. And the biggest self of self is indeed self. If sin is in fact grounded in this notion of what is it that I want, as opposed to somebody else.1

I wonder which of God’s laws Sanford was referencing here. Could it be one of the Ten Commandments? Could it be, depending on your denominational choice, Exodus 20:14? “You shall not commit adultery.” Know what’s excruciatingly difficult to find on Judeo-Christian websites? The prescribed consequences for violating “God’s Law.”

So addicted to the testament of the commandments are these hypocritical politicians that they’re willing to violate the First Amendment by signing bills to put them on display at public buildings, as Mark Sanford signed last year. But despite all the devotion to those laws, they ignore God’s prescribed consequences. Sanford says they’re designed to protect people from themselves, but I fear that Sanford must have missed that bible study lesson.

According to God’s law, the law that Sanford adopts so openly, Sanford should be put to death. So says Leviticus 20:10:

And the man that committeth adultery with another man’s wife, even he that committeth adultery with his neighbor’s wife, the adulterer and the adulteress shall surely be put to death.

Or, is that open to interpretation? How dare we, as a society, as the governed, allow men like Sanford and Ensign, another hypocritical adulterer, to openly condemn homosexuality and other behavior they deem immoral based on God’s law if, when they are confronted with violations of that very same set of laws, we give them a round of applause?

Sanford, you want to display the Ten Commandments on public grounds? Fine. We’ll compromise. You can do that if, on those very same public grounds, you stand there, unprotected, surrounded by stones, allowing the public to choose whether you’re subject to God’s Law as you subject others to your interpretation of it.

—

Mark Sanford:2

-Voted YES on banning partial-birth abortions. (Apr 2000)
-Voted YES on barring transporting minors to get an abortion. (Jun 1999)
-No civil unions; define one-man-one-woman marriage. (Nov 2002)
-Affirmative action in state contracts, but not colleges. (Nov 2002)
-Voted YES on banning gay adoptions in DC. (Jul 1999)
-Voted NO on ending preferential treatment by race in college admissions. (May 1998)
-Voted NO on maintaining right of habeas corpus in Death Penalty Appeals. (Mar 1996)
-Voted YES on making federal death penalty appeals harder. (Feb 1995)
-More prisons, more enforcement, effective death penalty. (Sep 1994)
-Voted YES on prohibiting needle exchange & medical marijuana in DC. (Oct 1999)
-Use tax code to reinforce families. (Sep 1994)

John Ensign:

-Voted YES on defining unborn child as eligible for SCHIP. (Mar 2008)
-Voted YES on prohibiting minors crossing state lines for abortion. (Mar 2008)
-Voted YES on barring HHS grants to organizations that perform abortions. (Oct 2007)
-Voted NO on expanding research to more embryonic stem cell lines. (Apr 2007)
-Voted YES on notifying parents of minors who get out-of-state abortions. (Jul 2006)
-Voted NO on $100M to reduce teen pregnancy by education & contraceptives. (Mar 2005)
-Voted YES on criminal penalty for harming unborn fetus during other crime. (Mar 2004)
-Voted YES on banning partial birth abortions except for maternal life. (Mar 2003)
-Rated 0% by NARAL, indicating a pro-life voting record. (Dec 2003)
-Rated 100% by the NRLC, indicating a pro-life stance. (Dec 2006)
-Prohibit transporting minors across state lines for abortion. (Jan 2008)
-Voted YES on recommending Constitutional ban on flag desecration. (Jun 2006)
-Voted YES on constitutional ban of same-sex marriage. (Jun 2006)
-Voted NO on adding sexual orientation to definition of hate crimes. (Jun 2002)
-Voted YES on loosening restrictions on cell phone wiretapping. (Oct 2001)
-Voted YES on ending the set-aside of 10% of highway funds for minorities. (Apr 1998)
-Supports anti-flag desecration amendment. (Mar 2001)
-Rated 20% by the ACLU, indicating an anti-civil rights voting record. (Dec 2002)
-Rated 11% by the HRC, indicating an anti-gay-rights stance. (Dec 2006)
-Rated 7% by the NAACP, indicating an anti-affirmative-action stance. (Dec 2006)
-Voted NO on reinstating $1.15 billion funding for the COPS Program. (Mar 2007)
-Voted NO on allowing Habeus Corpus appeals in capital cases. (Mar 1996)
-Voted NO on maintaining right of habeas corpus in Death Penalty Appeals. (Mar 1996)
-Voted YES on making federal death penalty appeals harder. (Feb 1995)
-More funding and stricter sentencing for hate crimes. (Apr 2001)
-More prisons, more enforcement, effective death penalty. (Sep 1994)
-Rated 100% by the Christian Coalition: a pro-family voting record. (Dec 2003)
-Permanent crime database for volunteers with kids. (Jul 2008)
-Use tax code to reinforce families. (Sep 1994)
-Rated 0% by the AU, indicating opposition to church-state separation. (Dec 2006)

In 1998, after President Bill Clinton admitted to having committed adultery with Monica Lewinsky, Ensign called on him to resign, saying, “He has no credibility left.”

In 2004, Ensign spoke on the Senate floor in favor of the proposed Federal Marriage Amendment, which would have barred states from recognizing same-sex marriage. Ensign said:

Marriage is the cornerstone on which our society was founded. For those who say that the Constitution is so sacred that we cannot or should not adopt the Federal Marriage Amendment, I would simply point out that marriage, and the sanctity of that institution, predates the American Constitution and the founding of our nation.

Ensign considers himself pro-life and both the National Right to Life Committee and NARAL Pro-Choice America identify him as having a pro-life voting record.

Ensign authored the Child Custody Protection Act in 2003 that prohibits taking minors across State lines in circumvention of laws requiring the involvement of parents in abortion decisions.3

—

Note: I do not follow God’s law. Therefore, I do not think Sanford and Ensign should be put to death. I am not advocating in this article that they should be, and I’m not suggesting that anyone go about making it happen (unless Sanford and Ensign are volunteering to manifest God’s will). As a matter of fact, I don’t think anyone should be put to death. I am merely trying to hold these men accountable for not only their actions, but also their stance with regard to their application of their set of beliefs upon the makings and enforcement of law in their position as representatives of the people.

  1. Transcript excerpt from WIS10. [<]
  2. From On the Issues [<]
  3. Wikipedia [<]

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Posted in Atheism, Government, Morality, Religion, Sexuality | 4 Comments »

Mormonism Unearthed: Part 2 of 3

Thursday, November 22nd, 2007

Mormons view the Old and New Testaments as divinely inspired and also have additional books in their scriptural canon, i.e., the Book of Mormon (where the term Mormon is derived), the Doctrine and Covenants, and the Pearl of Great Price. The vast majority of the content found in these additional books was dictated by Joseph Smith, Jr., and nearly all his teachings had some root in the King James Version of the Bible, or his interpretation of it.1

The historicity of the Book of Mormon has been widely disputed. The consensus among geneticists is that the Native American people descended primarily from north-east Asian stock. However, the Book of Mormon says that the Native American people descended from groups of Semitic people, including Israelites, who emigrated from the Old World by ship. The book also refers to things such as steel, horses, and elephants that are not known to have existed in the New World at the relevant time.

Another point of contention is Smith’s method of translation. Among other artifacts found with the plates, Smith wrote of interpreting devices called the Urim and Thummim. He described them as a pair of stones, fastened to a breastplate joined in a form similar to that of a large pair of spectacles. The Urim and Thummim, or “seer stones,” are what Joseph claims to have used to interpret the writings on the plates.2 Joseph’s first wife, Emma, was the first person to act as his scribe. She later recounted the following to her son Joseph Smith III: “In writing for your father I frequently wrote day after day, often sitting at the table close by him, he sitting with his face buried in his hat, with the stone in it, and dictating hour after hour with nothing between us.”3 David Whitmer, one of the Three Witnesses of the Book of Mormon, gave an address in 1887 in which he stated, “I will now give you a description of the manner in which the Book of Mormon was translated. Joseph Smith would put the seer stone into a hat, and put his face in the hat, drawing it closely around his face to exclude the light; and in the darkness the spiritual light would shine. A piece of something resembling parchment would appear, and on that appeared the writing. One character at a time would appear, and under it was the interpretation in English. Brother Joseph would read off the English to Oliver Cowdery, who was his principal scribe, and when it was written down and repeated to Brother Joseph to see if it was correct, then it would disappear, and another character with the interpretation would appear. Thus the Book of Mormon was translated by the gift and power of God, and not by any power of man.”4

Given these and other descriptions, it is easy to draw a correlation with Joseph’s early career as a “Glass Looker” who would be hired to locate buried treasure in exchange for fees in various areas of Western New York during the 1820s. To do this, he would place his “peep stone” into a hat and look into it to have the location of the treasure revealed to him. In 1826, he was arrested for this, under the charges of being “a disorderly person and an imposter.”5

In 1835, Smith purchased some Egyptian papyri containing hieroglyphics and four mummies from a traveling exhibition.6 He later translated the papyri in the same method he used with the Book of Mormon. He called it the Book of Abraham and in it recounted the story of Abraham’s early life and of a vision in which God revealed to Abraham much about astronomy, the creation of the world, and the creation of man. It was originally published in 1842 and is now an official book of the Pearl of Great Price.

Although the Rosetta Stone was discovered in 1799, it had not yet been completely deciphered. Translations of the Egyptian language were not widely available until the 1850s, and by this time the original papyri were considered lost. However, in 1966, twenty-two fragments of it were discovered in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. Both Mormon and non-Mormon Egyptologists confirmed their authenticity and that these documents were in Smith’s possession. This discovery raised some major issues. First, the papyri can reliably be dated to around A.D. 60, which is much too late for Abraham to have written it. Of course, it could be a copy, or a copy of a copy, but that brings us to the second issue. When the text of the book of Abraham is compared with the translations of the original papyri, they are clearly not the same. In fact, they were discovered to be funerary texts containing passages from the Egyptian Book of the Dead, which were commonly buried with mummies.7

The LDS Church has given two possible explanations for these contradictions, neither of which are very satisfactory. One explanation given is that Smith might have been translating a different portion of the papyrus rolls, a portion that remains lost. The other explanation given is that we must take into consideration what Joseph meant by the word translation. Receiving revelation through the Urim and Thummin is a much different process than translating a text using the tools of scholarly research.8 I can only concur.

-Laura

  1. Joseph Smith’s Wentworth Letter, 1842 [<]
  2. Joseph Smith-History, Pearl of Great Price [<]
  3. History of the RLDS Church, 8 vols., Independence, Missouri, 1951, “Last Testimony of Sister Emma” [<]
  4. David Whitmer, An Address to All Believers in Christ, Richmond, Missouri, 1887 [<]
  5. D. Michael Quinn, Early Mormonism and the Magic World View (Salt Lake City: Signature Books, 1987) [<]
  6. History of the Church, Vol. 2, Ch. 17, p. 236 [<]
  7. Jay M. Todd, “Egyptian Papyri Rediscovered,” Improvement Era, January 1968: 12–13 [<]
  8. Michael D. Rhodes, “I Have a Question,” Ensign, July 1988, 51 [<]

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Posted in Religion, Unearthed | No Comments »