Tag Archives: Frank Wolf

Manhattan Declaration in action, the shutdown

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The United States Conference of Catholic Bishops lobbied Congress to hold the continuing resolution and debt ceiling bill hostage to anti-birth control ideology. In a September 26 letter, they wrote:

We are writing once again, as Chairmen of the U.S. bishops’ Committee on Pro-Life Activities and Ad Hoc Committee for Religious Liberty, on an increasingly grave concern to our Church and many others: Preserving religious freedom and the right of conscience for all who take part in our health care system.
We have already urged you to enact the Health Care Conscience Rights Act (H.R. 940/S. 1204). As Congress considers a Continuing Resolution and debt ceiling bill in the days to come, we reaffirm the vital importance of incorporating the policy of this bill into such “must-pass” legislation.
Loudoun’s Chuck Colson inspired Manhattan Declaration lays out the programme for the tea party/”Christian” right led sedition.
…we will not comply with any edict that purports to compel our institutions to participate in abortions, embryo-destructive research, assisted suicide and euthanasia, or any other anti-life act; nor will we bend to any rule purporting to force us to bless immoral sexual partnerships, treat them as marriages or the equivalent, or refrain from proclaiming the truth, as we know it, about morality and immorality and marriage and the family.
…
Chuck Colson Founder, the Chuck Colson Center for Christian Worldview (Lansdowne, VA)
Congressman Frank Wolf co-sponsored H.R. 940.
Thanks Frank!

Frank Wolf’s “Science Trap”

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You’ve got to have pity for Frank Wolf. He must appeal to the anti-science Christianist TEA-Party right and his overwhelmingly smart, diverse, real-world, evidence-oriented constituency. He’s between a rock (or shall we say LaRock) and a proverbial hard place. For example, Liza Gold* just took him to task for his anti-violent-video game ideology. Here are a few excerpts from her Fairfax Times op-ed.

U.S. Rep. Frank Wolf (R-Dist. 10) has repeatedly stated his belief that violent video games are a major cause of gun violence and mass shootings. As per his website: “Common sense tells us that the level of violence on TV, in the movies and in many video games is a problem. While media violence is not the only factor of mass violence, it is one of the easiest factors to change and it needs to be addressed.” This position would not be objectionable, except for the fact that Rep. Wolf seems uninterested in any other subject relating to sensible firearm regulation reform. Continue reading →

Photo of the day

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Gary DeMar's "Pink Hitler"

The photo above appeared in a Gary DeMar “Godfather Politics” article titled  “Gestapo-Like Initiative Becomes Law in San Antonio.” DeMar was responding to San Antonio’s anti-discrimination ordinance, that, by the way, protects Christians. I “found” Godfather Politics because they praised Congressman Wolf (who just endorsed Dave LaRock) for his endorsement of labeling every single citizen of Saudi Arabia a potential terrorist. Continue reading →

Frank Wolf cosponsors Federal “Marriage” Amendment

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Frank Wolf trains Eugene Delgaudio (Sterlingfest, 2006)

Box Turtle Bulletin reports that Frank Wolf is co-sponsoring Rep Tim Huelskamp’s (R – KS) Federal Marriage [sic] Amendment. The language is:

Marriage in the United States shall consist only of the union of a man and a woman. Neither this Constitution, nor the constitution of any State, shall be construed to require that marriage or the legal incidents thereof be conferred upon any union other than the union of a man and a woman.

And that language runs afoul of the recent Supreme Court DOMA ruling. Here are excerpts from Justice Kennedy’s majority opinion:

The history of DOMA’s enactment and its own text demonstrate that interference with the equal dignity of same-sex marriages, a dignity conferred by the States in the exercise of their sovereign power, was more than an incidental effect of the federal statute. It was its essence.

…The federal statute is invalid, for no legitimate purpose overcomes the purpose and effect to disparage and to injure those whom the State, by its marriage laws, sought to protect in personhood and dignity. By seeking to displace this protection and treating those persons as living in marriages less respected than others, the federal statute is in violation of the Fifth Amendment.

Continue reading →

Prison Fellowship Ministries’ Klunder Problem

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The AP reports “Prison counselors readied PR plan after kidnapping of 2 Iowa girls.”

Days after two Iowa girls were kidnapped, a national group that provided faith-based counseling to their abductor before his release from prison was putting a public relations plan in motion and preparing to protect its image, records released Thursday show.

Michael James Klunder, was first accused of assault with intent to commit sexual abuse in 1986, when he was just fifteen years old. Five years later, he kidnapped and assaulted an twenty-one year old girl. He then kidnapped two three year old children and left them alive and abandoned in a trash bin fifty miles from where they were abducted.

Klunder graduated from the Iowa’s unconstitutional (and defunct) Innerchange Freedom Initiative faith-based counseling program. Unlike the media outlets Breakpoint and the Colson Center for “Christian” Worldview, IFI is the one program where Loudoun’s Prison Fellowship Ministries actually councils prisoners. The AP report continues.

Court records show that his Bible counselor heaped praise on Klunder when he was discharged, saying he was at the top of his class and “a very intelligent young man.”

“He is a changed individual with a good prospect of success,” the counselor wrote.

Klunder had cited his Christian-based treatment in litigation in which he was seeking parental rights for his son while behind bars, and in statements to the Iowa Bard of Parole pleading for his release.

Although he had a long history of violence, Klunder was released without supervision.

Prison Fellowship Ministries enjoys a $250K Loudoun tax exemption and is a local Republican darling. John Whitbeck, Chairman of the Republican 10th Congressional District Committee and leader of the Government Reform Commission outsourcing study suggested that Loudoun outsource social services to PFM. Congressman Frank Wolf was awarded the PFM Wilberforce award in 1990.

 

anti-leak SOS PAC demands Benghazi-leaks

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An angry, angry Frank Wolf

The newly-formed “Special Operations Speaks” PAC is actively supporting Congressman Frank Wolf’s H.Res. 36, a bill to create a House Select Committee on the Terrorist Attack in Benghazi and essentially produce a wiki-leaks like trove of information about the attack and the response. The SOS PAC includes noteworthy christianist warrior LTG William G. (Jerry) Boykin who made “fiercely anti-Muslim” remarks on NBC Nightly News and the Los Angeles Times, and claimed that George W. Bush was “put by god in the White House,” and that the war on terror is “a spiritual war against a spiritual enemy, and that enemy’s name is Satan.”

In their open letter, the SOS PAC demands the release of all manner of classified operational information. Ironically, the SOS mission statement condemns certain leaks (emphasis mine).

“We, as veterans, legatees, and supporters of the Special Operations communities of all the Armed Forces, have noted with dismay and deep alarm the recent stream of highly damaging leaks of information about various aspects of America’s shadow war in the overall War on Terror.”

The story was reported in the Daily Mail Online, where scary Benghazi photos are framed against a storyboard of Hollywood celeb gossip.

Frank Wolf holds one-sided youth violence hearing

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Congressman Frank Wolf (R-VA), Chair of the House Appropriations Commerce, Justice, Science and Related Agencies Subcommittee held a meeting on the National Science Foundation report: “Youth Violence: What We Need To Know” on March 19 that correlated video games with violence. No video game proponents were called to witness, and the video game industry is calling foul.

“Unfortunately Chairman Wolf is trying to make this hearing as one -sided as he possibly can. The hearing will have two panels and two witnesses – both who will present evidence that violent media has some sort of connection to real-world violent acts. Wolf is handling this hearing the way other lawmakers tried to handle SOPA and PIPA; by presenting only one perspective. Clearly there’s mountains of research that disputes Bushman’s claim that video games and other media are a bad influence on America’s youth.”

Wolf’s press release on the NSF report states that (emphasis mine):

“The research described in the NSF report supports Wolf’s belief that rampage shootings are a result of multiple factors, including access to firearms, mental health issues, and exposure to violent media, including violent video games.”

Congressman Wolf could have called the authors of Grand Theft Childhood, Drs. Cheryl K. Olson and Lawrence Kutner who have been studying the issue since 2004 after winning a $1.5M grant from George W. Bush’s Justice Department. Their research exposes many of the myths that the Wolf-funded report perpetuates.

If you have kids, ask them if they know the difference between real world tragedy, and video game violence. I bet they do.

 

GRC vice-chair is billionaire’s lobbyist

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Scott Hamberger, vice-chair of the Loudoun County Government Reform Commission “elevates” Pete Peterson’s “Campaign to Fix the Debt” in a recent LTE to the Leesburg Today. Visit fixthedebt.org and you’ll see a strange synchrony of fearmongering. All of the sudden, a bunch of grass tops groups covering a variety of demographics are informing us that “debt is bad.” And all the web sites of the collaborating groups look strangely similar. And the messaging is all the same.

That messaging reminds me of those “Car Cash” commercials. “Bring us your car title and you can drive away, smiling, with a hand full of cash.” Cash is good, and debt is bad, right?

Pete Peterson, the billionaire, who’s “mostly false” claims are parroted by Congressman Frank Wolf (R-VA) appears to be behind the scheme which is covered in depth in the week’s “The Nation” magazine and in a NY Times article titled “Public Goals, Private Interests in Debt Campaign“.

The Nation describes the “elevating” of the so-called debt controversy thusly:

Who does that elevating? Meet the Campaign to Fix the Debt, the billionaire-funded project that uses Alan Simpson and Erskine Bowles as figureheads for a fearmongering campaign to convince Americans that the deficits the United States has run throughout its history have suddenly metastasized into “a cancer that will destroy this country from within.” It is the latest incarnation of Wall Street mogul Pete Peterson’s long campaign to get Congress and the White House to cut Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid while providing tax breaks for corporations and the wealthy.

Peterson has poured an estimated half-billion dollars into schemes so unpopular, so economically unsound and so obviously self-serving that even conservative politicians run from them, as the implosion of the Simpson-Bowles commission illustrates. So Peterson has repurposed his project into what Institute for Policy Studies (IPS) Global Economy Project director Sarah Anderson calls “a Trojan horse” for “filthy rich tax-dodging hypocrites.” With a stable of CEOs, Peterson timed the launch of this new $60 million campaign to exploit the wrangling over the fiscal cliff, the debt ceiling and the sequester. Fix the Debt has signed up prominent Democrats and Republicans as spokespeople (many of whom have undisclosed financial ties to firms that lobby on deficit-related issues) and launched “astroturf” campaigns to create the fantasy that young people and seniors are concerned enough about debts and deficits to support Peterson’s austerity agenda.

 

Petrochristian worldview

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The photo of a Nigerian oil spill, above, comes from desmonadespair. It shows the reality of life for people who happen to live over oil fields ripe for extraction. Meanwhile, Eric Metaxas writing for BreakPoint on March 6, 2013 explains Prison Fellowship Ministries’ “worldview” product, emphasis mine. Continue reading →