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News

Nancy Pelosi wants investigation of Ground Zero mosque opponents

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Here’s the video of Nancy Pelosi’s remarks. (H/T Washington Times)

Transcript:

“There is no question there is a concerted effort to make this a political issue by some. And I join those who have called for looking into how is this opposition to the mosque being funded.”

She doesn’t want to know where the millions of dollars to fund the mosque came from… she wants to investigate the finances of people who disagree with the mosque. Presumably, this would mean that she wants to investigate the finances of the families of 9/11 victims to see who is funding their opposition to the Ground Zero mosque.

Here’s the response from Debra Burlingame and Tim Sumners, the co-founders of 9/11 Families for a Safe & Strong America. (H/T Weekly Standard)

For the last four months, 9/11 families, first responders, survivors and concerned citizens have been asking where developers are getting funding for a $100-million dollar mosque and Islamic center planned for Ground Zero. The imam who is heading the project has refused to identify the source of the $5 million cash that was used to purchase the building, and told an Arab newspaper that he will get funding for the project from Arab and Muslim countries. Given the imam’s statements, that America was “an accessory to the crime” on 9/11, that “Osama Bin Laden was made in the U.S.A.” as well as his repeated refusal to condemn Hamas, we believe he has an obligation to come clean to the public on his financial sources. Our concern has been amplified by news that the imam’s worldwide “Shariah Index Project” is being funded by the Malaysian government, and that he is a principal figure in the Perdana Global Peace Project, the number one funder of the Gaza Flotilla, a violent attempt to break the Israeli blockade of Gaza.

Today we learn that instead of taking our concerns seriously, Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi suggested that the opponents of the Ground Zero mosque should be investigated. This comment is clearly intended to intimidate those of us who are speaking out to preserve the sanctity of Ground Zero, where more than 20,000 human remains have been recovered, 1,845 in the last five years. We can assure Ms. Pelosi that whatever funds we have spent to get our message out, they pale in comparison to the price we have personally paid since that day, and continue to pay as a result of the mosque project. The vast majority of the American people support us. They lived through September 11 with us, and they know, as we do, that this not a “local issue.” What happened on 9/11 affected all Americans.

Remember in November.

Commentary

What should we think about Obama’s use of the Bible?

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Story here on the NewsReal blog. (H/T Mary)

Excerpt:

Dr. Jeffrey Siker, professor of religion at Loyola University and a liberal Presbyterian minister, was featured in the LA Times yesterday for an academic paper he did on Obama’s use of the Bible in public speeches and writings.  His findings show a candidate and President willing to pick and choose scripture that Obama considers pluralistic and in support of his policies.  Siker presents this fact as positive pragmatism instead of what it really may be – sacrilegious ambition.

[…]Obama uses “brother’s keeper” to convince Americans to support socialist policies.

“This vision of being my brother’s keeper has important political and social consequences when it comes to such issues as healthcare, consumer protection or education reform.” – Siker

The problem with that interpretation is that the “brother’s keeper” passage has nothing to do with supporting welfare policies.  Cain has just killed his brother Abel, and God was condemning Cain for the sin by asking Cain where his brother was.  Cain said he didn’t know where Abel was because he’s not responsible for him.  God does not respond by saying, “Yes you are Cain.  You are responsible to make enough money to pay not only for your healthcare but also Abel’s.”

Quoting the Bible to teach socialism only works on people who haven’t read the Bible. You can’t get socialism from the Bible, because there is no passage that teaches that Jews and Christians should embrace the idea of wealth redistribution by government. The Bible teaches private, voluntary charity.

Related posts

    News

    Jay Richards investigates whether George Soros is funding Jim Wallis

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    In this post on National Review. (H/T ECM)

    Excerpt:

    In World magazine on July 17, Marvin Olasky called on “progressive evangelical” Jim Wallis to come clean and admit that he is not a non-partisan, as he likes to claim, but rather a devoted man of the Left. Olasky reported that Wallis’s organization, Sojourners, had received grants from George Soros’s foundation, the Open Society Institute (OSI), and had lent Sojourners’ mailing list to the Obama campaign.

    […]Among the documents I now have are pages from the OSI website that list two grants to Sojourners — one for $200,000 in 2004, “To support the Messaging and Mobilization Project: Engaging Christians on the Importance of Civic Involvement,” and one for $25,000 in 2006, “To support a branding assessment” for the purpose of merging “Sojourners and Call to Renewal into one organization.” I have physical copies of these pages, which is good, because these pages seem to have disappeared from the OSI website (I’m sure that’s just a coincidence).

    […]But there’s more to it. In two blog posts at Patheos published over the last week, Tim Dalrymple reported that he, too, was looking into Olasky’s charge, and in a thoughtful, unbiased interview published on August 9, he asked Wallis himself about Olasky’s charges.

    Before responding directly, Wallis launched into bizarre invective against Olasky, claiming (among other things) that Olasky believes in a “sinless market.” This caricature is practically surreal to anyone familiar with Olasky’s actual views — actually, it’s beyond surreal, since surreal art has some illuminating connection to the original. Olasky is a Calvinist, which means he places particularly strong emphasis on human depravity in every area of human experience, including the market.

    Wallis continued:

    It’s not hyperbole or overstatement to say that Glenn Beck lies for a living. I’m sad to see Marvin Olasky doing the same thing. No, we don’t receive money from Soros. Given the financial crisis of nonprofits, maybe Marvin should call Soros and ask him to send us money.

    So, no, we don’t receive money from George Soros. Our books are totally open, always have been. Our money comes from Christians who support us and who read Sojourners.

    Well, as I said above, I’ve got physical copies of what appear to be grants to Sojourners from the Open Society Institute website, which have since been taken offline. Dalrymple does, too. In fact, until Wednesday, August 11, Dalrymple’s second blog post at Patheos had accompanying PDFs of the OSI webpages.

    […]According to Sojourners’ 990s (go here and search for “Sojourners” in “DC”), their total assets went from $513,896 in 2002 to $4,615,468 in 2009. Call me skeptical, but I’d be willing to bet that this windfall didn’t all come from humble readers of Sojourners magazine.

    Wallis supports Barack Obama, a radically pro-abortion President. Abortion is the slavery of our age – a political movement based on pure greed, whose aim is to terminate the lives of a weaker class of humans because of the selfishness of a stronger class of humans. And yet Wallis tries to pass himself off as a Christian. So I know exactly who to believe when his testimony contradicts respected Christian scholars like Marvin O’Lasky and Jay Richards.