News

Obama spent 23 million taxpayer dollars to promote abortion in Kenya

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Story here from Fox News. (H/T Jammie Wearing Fool via ECM)

Excerpt:

A Republican lawmaker is accusing the White House of “unconscionable” and “illegal” acts for its role in Kenya’s referendum on a new constitution, which would legalize abortion in the country for the first time.

Rep. Chris Smith of New Jersey cited a report by the U.S. Agency for International Development, or USAID, which estimated that more than $23 million in U.S. taxpayer funds have been spent on the referendum, and Smith and other conservatives have complained that at least some of that money has been spent in sport of the proposed constitution, possibly violating U.S. law.

“Under no circumstances should the U.S. government take sides,” Smith said at a news conference Wednesday. “Yet that is precisely what the Obama administration has done.”

He and other lawmakers accuse the Obama administration of offering incentives to Kenya to approve the controversial new constitution, promising that passage would “allow money to flow” into the nation’s coffers. A federal law known as the Siljander Amendment makes it illegal for the U.S. government to lobby on abortion in other countries.

[…]One group that has received almost $3 million from the U.S. government, Development Alternatives, openly supported “advocating for efforts to eventually legalize abortion in Kenya,” Smith said. Another group, The Committee of Experts on Constitutional Review in Kenya, changed the wording of the Kenyan constitution’s abortion clause to make abortion more widely accessible – and has received over $180,000 from the U.S.

Thanks to these findings, nine of the more than 200 organizations in Kenya that received money from the U.S. have been suspended from receiving assistance, the U.S. Embassy spokeswoman Katya Thomas in Nairobi told the AP Friday.

But the congressmen are asking for more. They want the White House to be held accountable for its role.

“If violations of the law have occurred, which on the face of it they have, the information must be brought before law enforcement,” Smith said. “Not even presidents are above the law.”

We’re in a recession. Many people don’t even have jobs, and yet these socialist bunglers waste 23 million dollars of taxpayer money that could have been used by small businesses to create jobs.

And I thought that Democrats were opposed to American imperialism? I guess not.

News

Freedom of Information Act request processing delayed by Democrats

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Story from the Washington Post. (H/T ECM)

Excerpt:

For at least a year, the Homeland Security Department detoured hundreds of requests for federal records to senior political advisers for highly unusual scrutiny, probing for information about the requesters and delaying disclosures deemed too politically sensitive, according to nearly 1,000 pages of internal e-mails obtained by The Associated Press.

The department abandoned the practice after AP investigated. Inspectors from the department’s Office of Inspector General quietly conducted interviews last week to determine whether political advisers acted improperly.

The Freedom of Information Act, the main tool forcing the government to be more open, is designed to be insulated from political considerations. Anyone who seeks information through the law is supposed to get it unless disclosure would hurt national security, violate personal privacy or expose confidential decision-making in certain areas.

But in July 2009, Homeland Security introduced a directive requiring a wide range of information to be vetted by political appointees for “awareness purposes,” no matter who requested it. The government on Wednesday estimated fewer than 500 requests underwent such political scrutiny; the Homeland Security Department received about 103,000 total requests for information last fiscal year.

Career employees were ordered to provide Secretary Janet Napolitano‘s political staff with information about the people who asked for records – such as where they lived, whether they were private citizens or reporters – and about the organizations where they worked.

If a member of Congress sought such documents, employees were told to specify Democrat or Republican.

This, despite President Barack Obama‘s statement that federal workers should “act promptly and in a spirit of cooperation” under FOIA, and Attorney General Eric Holder‘s assertion: “Unnecessary bureaucratic hurdles have no place in the new era of open government.”

The special reviews at times delayed the release of information to Congress, watchdog groups and the news media for weeks beyond the usual wait, even though the directive specified the reviews should take no more than three days.

The foot-dragging reached a point that officials worried the department would get sued, one e-mail shows.

A new era of transparency and accountability! Not at all like paranoid Richard Nixon! No, no, no!

And we’re still operating without a budget – they don’t want to say how large the deficits are before the election!

News

Triablogue guys write massive response to “The Christian Delusion”

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Apparently a bunch of less-moderate atheists like Hector Avalos, Richard Carrier and Robert Price decided to write a book attacking Christianity. These guys are internet infidel types. Dan Barker gives the foreword, and I don’t think he is a very even-keeled person.

The Triablogue post is here. Their e-book is free to download.

Excerpt:

The book contains chapters written by a wide range of modern atheists, including Hector Avalos, Richard Carrier, and Edward T. Babinski[*]. (If those names sound familiar it’s because we’ve engaged with each of them many times on Triablogue.) Of his contribution to the book, Carrier slapped both of his chapters with a “tour de force” label and confidently assured us, “I doubt I’ll ever have to write another [refutation of the resurrection].” He says: “My debunking of [Christian claims on science] is so decisive in this chapter, you won’t need to refer anyone anywhere else.”

But such hubris vastly overreaches reality, and Triablogue is here to demonstrate it with The Infidel Delusion.

The Infidel Delusion was written (in alphabetical order) by Patrick Chan, Jason Engwer, Steve Hays, and Paul Manata. This is a true tour de force. By the time I got to Manata’s debunking of Valerie Tarico’s naturalistic reductionism in chapter two, the perfect metaphor had formed in my head: Collectively, these Triabloggian authors were firing intellectual howitzer shells point-blank into a cardboard shanty town.

You can watch the Craig vs Avalos debate, or the Craig vs Carrier debate or the Craig vs Price debate if you want to see how well their ideas stand up in a real contest.

You can find the debates here.

Thanks to Jason Engwer for giving me the heads-up about Triablogue’s rebuttal. Triablogue is a serious apologetics blog.

In all fairness, there are much better non-Christians out there who are not crazy, like Austin Dacey and Paul Draper. Although Price sounded good in his recent debate on the Bible and slavery.