
AND THE THIRD ANGEL FOLLOWED THEM, SAYING WITH A LOUD VOICE, IF ANY MAN WORSHIP THE BEAST AND HIS IMAGE, AND RECEIVE HIS MARK IN HIS FOREHEAD, OR IN HIS HAND. *** REVELATION 14:9
Saturday, February 11, 2012
Searching Questions

Friday, February 10, 2012
And ye will not come to me, that ye might have life

19Then answered Jesus and said unto them, Verily, verily, I say unto you, The Son can do nothing of himself, but what he seeth the Father do: for what things soever he doeth, these also doeth the Son likewise.
20For the Father loveth the Son, and sheweth him all things that himself doeth: and he will shew him greater works than these, that ye may marvel.
21For as the Father raiseth up the dead, and quickeneth them; even so the Son quickeneth whom he will.
22For the Father judgeth no man, but hath committed all judgment unto the Son:
23That all men should honour the Son, even as they honour the Father. He that honoureth not the Son honoureth not the Father which hath sent him.
24Verily, verily, I say unto you, He that heareth my word, and believeth on him that sent me, hath everlasting life, and shall not come into condemnation; but is passed from death unto life.
25Verily, verily, I say unto you, The hour is coming, and now is, when the dead shall hear the voice of the Son of God: and they that hear shall live.
26For as the Father hath life in himself; so hath he given to the Son to have life in himself;
27And hath given him authority to execute judgment also, because he is the Son of man.
28Marvel not at this: for the hour is coming, in the which all that are in the graves shall hear his voice,
29And shall come forth; they that have done good, unto the resurrection of life; and they that have done evil, unto the resurrection of damnation.
30I can of mine own self do nothing: as I hear, I judge: and my judgment is just; because I seek not mine own will, but the will of the Father which hath sent me.
31If I bear witness of myself, my witness is not true.
32There is another that beareth witness of me; and I know that the witness which he witnesseth of me is true.
33Ye sent unto John, and he bare witness unto the truth.
34But I receive not testimony from man: but these things I say, that ye might be saved.
35He was a burning and a shining light: and ye were willing for a season to rejoice in his light.
36But I have greater witness than that of John: for the works which the Father hath given me to finish, the same works that I do, bear witness of me, that the Father hath sent me.
37And the Father himself, which hath sent me, hath borne witness of me. Ye have neither heard his voice at any time, nor seen his shape.
38And ye have not his word abiding in you: for whom he hath sent, him ye believe not.
39Search the scriptures; for in them ye think ye have eternal life: and they are they which testify of me.
40And ye will not come to me, that ye might have life.
41I receive not honour from men.
42But I know you, that ye have not the love of God in you.
43I am come in my Father's name, and ye receive me not: if another shall come in his own name, him ye will receive.
44How can ye believe, which receive honour one of another, and seek not the honour that cometh from God only?
45Do not think that I will accuse you to the Father: there is one that accuseth you, even Moses, in whom ye trust.
46For had ye believed Moses, ye would have believed me; for he wrote of me.
47But if ye believe not his writings, how shall ye believe my words?
Thursday, February 09, 2012
Catholic TV network sues US over birth control mandate
The measure would require religious-based employers to provide insurance coverage for birth control that church teaching forbids. NBC's Kelly O'Donnell reports.
The Obama administration's rule requiring religious employers to cover birth control services is going to court after a Catholic TV network sued Thursday to block the mandate.
The order, which the Department of Health and Human Services finalized last month, eliminates a federal exemption that allows religion-affiliated institutions to opt out of the law requiring employers to cover contraceptive services in their health insurance packages.
Churches themselves would remain exempt, but when it goes into effect Aug. 1, the rule will require church-affiliated universities, hospitals, clubs and the like to cover "all [federally] approved forms of contraception."
"We had no other option," said Michael Warsaw, president of EWTN, which stands for Eternal Word Television Network.
"Under the HHS mandate, EWTN is being forced by the government to make a choice: Either we provide employees coverage for contraception, sterilization and abortion-inducing drugs and violate our conscience or offer our employees and their families no health insurance coverage at all. Neither of those choices is acceptable," Warsaw said.
On at least one point, Warsaw is wrong, said Erin Shields, HHS's top spokeswoman.
While the rule covers "emergency contraceptives" like Plan B and Next Choice, it doesn't cover drugs that cause abortion, Shields told NBC station WYFF of Greenville, S.C.
The HHS rule is also being challenged in Congress, where Sens. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., and Joe Manchin, D-W.Va., have sponsored legislation that would restore the option for religious organizations to opt out of coverage.
"This is about whether the government of the United States should have the power to go in and tell a faith-based organization they have to pay for something that they teach their members shouldn't be doing. It`s that simple," Rubio said.
Sens. Joe Manchin, D-W.Va., and Marco Rubio, R-Fla., detail their bill to let organizations opt out of the contraception rule.
But advocates say the measure is an advance for women's reproductive rights, pointing to a study by the Guttmacher Institute, a nonprofit group that studies sexual and reproductive issues, which reported last year that nearly all sexually active U.S. women had used birth control. That includes 98 percent of Catholic women, the study reported.
Source
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High-ranking members of US military part of ‘Knights of Malta,’ ‘Opus Dei,’ reporter claims
Veteran investigative reporter Seymour Hersh has broken some massive stories in his day, but uncovering secret societies within the highest echelons of America’s military would probably be the biggest of his career.
Well, get ready for the media storm, because that’s essentially what Hersh told an audience in Doha, Qatar recently, according to a report published earlier this week by Foreign Policy.
Speaking at a campus operated by Georgetown University’s School of Foreign Service, Hersh said he was working on a new book that details “how eight or nine neoconservative, radicals if you will, overthrew the American government.”
“It’s not only that the neocons took it over but how easily they did it — how Congress disappeared, how the press became part of it, how the public acquiesced,” he continued, according to the published quotes.
Hersh also lamented President Obama’s continuance of the Bush administration’s worst abuses.
“Just when we needed an angry black man, we didn’t get one,” he reportedly said.
The Foreign Policy report added that in 2003, those “in the Cheney shop” were not concerned about the havoc the invasion of Iraq was destined to cause.
“[The] attitude was, ‘What’s this? What are they all worried about, the politicians and the press, they’re all worried about some looting?” Hersh was quoted as saying. “Don’t they get it? We’re gonna change moseques into cathedrals. And when we get all the oil, nobody’s gonna give a damn.’ That’s the attitude. We’re gonna change mosques into cathedrals. That’s an attitude that pervades, I’m here to say, a large percentage of the Joint Special Operations Command [JSOC].”
He further claimed that Gen. Stanley McChrystal, Vice Admiral William McRaven and others in the JSOC were members of the “Knights of Malta” and “Opus Dei,” two little known Catholic orders.
He added that members of these societies have developed a secret set of insignias that represent “the whole notion that this is a culture war” between religions.“They do see what they’re doing — and this is not an atypical attitude among some military — it’s a crusade, literally,” Hersh reportedly continued. “They see themselves as the protectors of the Christians. They’re protecting them from the Muslims [as in] the 13th century. And this is their function.”
It was President George W. Bush who first invoked images of a holy war in the Middle East, when he suggested soon after Sept. 11, 2001 that the US was on a “crusade” in the region.
The “Knights of Malta” were a Catholic order founded in 1085 as a group of monks who cared for the wounded. It evolved into a military order that safeguarded Christian pilgrims from Muslims during the nine “Crusades,” where Europe’s Christian states laid siege to Muslims for control of Jerusalem.
“Opus Dei,” popularly depicted in the Hollywood film “The DaVinci Code,” was founded in 1928 and officially accepted as part of the Catholic church in 1947. The group’s website claimedtheir principle calling was to bring about a “Christian renewal” around the world.
Doubts, denials and a distinctive trend
Raw Story reached out to Hersh and The New Yorker to confirm the accuracy of his quotes, placing this report on hold until they responded. Both declined to make any further statement, neither confirming nor denying the quotes.
However, one source close to Hersh who spoke to Raw Story off the record, suggested thatForeign Policy‘s report was indeed correct.
Raw Story followed-up on the quotes due to a widely-reported false claim attributed to Hersh in May 2009, where he’d allegedly said former Vice President Dick Cheney ordered the assassination of former Pakistani Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto.
The report, which appeared to have originated in Pakistan, was picked up by The Wall Street Journal and the conservative-leaning American Spectator, but both removed the links after Raw Story published a denial from Hersh. A link to Raw Story’s original report was unavailable due to a database malfunction.
Hersh, a Pulitzer-winning author and reporter, has previously reported that the JSOC was set up by former Vice President Cheney as something of an “executive assassination squad” that operated outside of congressional authority.
Gen. Stanley McChrystal, who resigned after Rolling Stone reporter Michael Hastings quoted him mocking the US civilian command, led JSOC before taking command of America’s war effort in Afghanistan.
In an email to the military’s Stars and Stripes publication, McChrystal’s spokesman, David Bolger,panned Hersh’s claim.
“The allegations recently made by Seymour Hersh relating to General McChrystal’s involvement with an organization called The Knights of Malta are completely false and without basis in fact,” he reportedly wrote. “General McChrystal is not and has never been a member of that organization.”
The religious indoctrination of US soldiers has been in headlines in recent weeks as soldiers who “failed” the “spiritual fitness” portion of the “comprehensive soldier fitness” test claimed they were forced to attend Christian ceremonies and become “born again” by professing love for the Christian deity.
Similarly, GQ magazine uncovered last year a series of top-secret military briefings prepared by former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld that included passages from the Bible.
Trijicon Inc., a defense contractor, was also discovered last January to have been for years placing scriptural references on gun sights used by the US military in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Their actions revealed Trijicon was forced to provide the Pentagon with kits to remove the codes.
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Detention of U.S. Persons: What is the Existing Law?
When Congress passed the 2012 National Defense Authorization Act, it included provisions that authorized U.S. armed forces to detain persons who are captured in the conflict with al-Qaeda, the Taliban, or associated forces. However, Congress also said that those provisions did not provide any new authority to detain U.S. citizens or others who may be captured in the United States.
“Nothing in this section shall be construed to affect existing law or authority relating to the detention of United States citizens…,” section 1021(e) of theAct states. “We are simply codifying existing law,” said Sen. Carl Levin, chair of the Senate Armed Services Committee, at the time.
But this was an evasion, since existing law regarding the detention of U.S. persons is indeterminate in important respects.
A new report from the Congressional Research Service fleshes out the law of detention, identifying what is known to be true as well as what is unsettled and unresolved.
It is perfectly clear, for example, that a U.S. citizen who fought alongside enemy forces against the United States on a foreign battlefield could be lawfully detained. This was affirmed by the U.S. Supreme Court in the case Hamdi v. Rumsfeld.
On the other hand, the CRS report explains, “the President’s legal authority to militarily detain terrorist suspects apprehended in the United States has not been definitively settled.”
Nor has Congress helped to settle it. “This bill does not endorse either side’s interpretation,” said Sen. Dianne Feinstein on December 1 about the defense authorization act, “but leaves it to the courts to decide.”
So if a detention of a U.S. person does occur, the CRS said, “it will be up to a court to determine Congress’s intent when it enacted the AUMF [the 2001 Authorization to Use Military Force], or alternatively, to decide whether the law as it was subsequently developed by the courts and executive branch sufficiently established that authority for such detention already exists.”
Up to now, “Lower courts that have addressed questions the Supreme Court left unanswered have not achieved a consensus on the extent to which Congress has authorized the detention without trial of U.S. persons as ‘enemy combatants,’ and Congress has not so far clarified its intent.”
The new CRS report traces the development of U.S. detention policy from the Alien and Sedition Acts of 1798 through the Civil War, the two World Wars, and the Cold War up to the present day. See Detention of U.S. Persons as Enemy Belligerents by CRS legislative attorney Jennifer K. Elsea, February 1, 2012.
Some other new (or newly updated) CRS reports obtained by Secrecy News that have not been made readily available to the public include the following.
Terrorist Watch List Screening and Brady Background Checks for Firearms, February 1, 2012
War Powers Resolution: Presidential Compliance, February 1, 2012
The U.S. Postal Service’s Financial Condition: Overview and Issues for Congress, January 27, 2012
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Arizona Lawmakers Target Public Workers' Unions
February 9, 2012
Labor unions plan to rally in front of the Arizona State Capitol on Thursday afternoon to protest four bills quickly moving through the state Legislature that could make last year's Wisconsin labor laws look modest by comparison.
Three of the four bills restrict the way unions collect dues and the way workers get paid for union activities. The fourth bans collective bargaining between governments and government workers: state and local. Unlike Wisconsin, it affects all government employees, including police and firefighters.
"It seems as though those employees or at least the unions that represent them don't care what the burden is on the taxpayer as long as they get theirs," says state Sen. Rick Murphy, a Republican who is sponsoring the bills.
Murphy says collective bargaining lets public workers put themselves ahead of the public they are working for.
You're not in government, you know, to collect a fat paycheck. You're in government to serve.
- Nick Dranias, Goldwater Institute
Nick Dranias of the Phoenix-based Goldwater Institute, a libertarian/conservative think tank that helped Murphy write the bills, says public-sector workers in Arizona make about 6 percent more in salary and benefits than their private-sector counterparts.
"You're not in government, you know, to collect a fat paycheck," Dranias says. "You're in government to serve. And if you get paid reasonably, that's nice, but the moment you feel the need to organize collectively and create laws like collective-bargaining laws that give you special privileges to negotiate and extract compensation not seen in the private sector, you've gone too far."
Arizona is also different from Wisconsin in that it's a right-to-work state: No one can be forced to join a union. So unions in Arizona already have less clout. Still, 80 percent of police in the state choose to belong to a union.
Brian Livingston, who represents the Arizona Police Association, which is fighting the bills, says police and firefighters typically get paid less in salary, but he acknowledges that they negotiate better benefits and retirement plans. Livingston says police deserve it.
"By the time we retire, we know that most of us will not live beyond what the average private citizen does," he says. "And I'm speaking specifically about public safety, the rigors of our occupation, the hazards of our occupation take a lifelong toll on our longevity."
Democrats in the Arizona Legislature are outnumbered by Republicans 2-to-1 in the House and by more in the Senate.
Senate Minority Leader David Schapira says he is appalled by the bills.
"These bills are clearly the most anti-worker, anti-middle class, anti-union bills in the history of the country," he says.
These bills are clearly the most anti-worker, anti-middle class, anti-union bills in the history of the country.
- Arizona Senate Minority Leader David Schapira
Schapira says the bills are purely political. They're being considered, he says, because union leaders tend to support Democrats over Republicans.
"These are people that the Tea Party leadership at the State Capitol in Arizona disagree with, and so they're punishing them and that's the purpose of these pieces of legislation," he says.
Murphy, the bills' sponsor, acknowledges that public worker labor unions are a political problem for him. The elected officials labor leaders are negotiating with, he says, are afraid to give in to unions for fear of political reprisal.
"When the unions are the ones who are disproportionately influencing those elected officials, the elected officials are very rarely on the side of the taxpayers in those negotiations," he says.
The swiftness of this new attempt at cutting the power of public worker unions took labor leaders by surprise. The bills were introduced just last week, passed through committee and are ready for a full Senate vote.
Avoiding Labor Conflicts
Selected Messages, Book 2, p.141-144.