PK'S NOTE: Max, I'm shocked. Maybe now that he's not running anymore he can be more critical, take some parting shots?
HEADSLAM HEADLINES:
Obama on IRS Scandal: I've Got No Patience With It
Obama on Edited Benghazi Talking Points: This is Frankly a Sideshow
Draft IG report: Managers involved March 2010 forward in IRS focus on conservative groups (PK'S NOTE: Per Rush, the date is significant because March 2010 is when Obamacare was signed into law - and Citizen United opinion issued January 2010.)
Obama White House downplays IRS intimidation scandal
White House press secretary Jay Carney said in a statement Monday that President Barack Obama is “concerned” that a “small number of Internal Revenue Service employees may have” inappropriately singled out conservative groups for further review during the 2012 election and that he expects “appropriate steps” will be taken should an independent review find that rules were broken.
“The President believes that the American people expect and deserve to have the very best public servants with the highest levels of integrity working in government agencies on their behalf,” he said. “Based on recent media reports, he is concerned that the conduct of a small number of Internal Revenue Service employees may have fallen short of that standard. We understand that the matter is currently under review by the Inspector General. If the Inspector General finds that there were any rules broken or that conduct of government officials did not meet the standards required of them, the President expects that swift and appropriate steps will be taken to address any misconduct.”
There are a couple of things important to note here…
1.) The conduct of a “small number” of IRS employees? This isn’t about some low-level desk jockeys. As CBS has reported, this scandal went all the way to the top:
According to a timline obtained by CBS News, the IRS began singling out tea party groups in the spring of 2010. Though the agency insisted Friday no high-level employees were aware of the targeting, a draft which surfaced over the weekend of an inspector general’s report due to be released this week revealed that Lois Lerner — an IRS official in charge of oversight of tax-exempt groups — knew about it as early as June 2011.
Lerner allegedly became aware of the targeting during a meeting two summers ago — 10 months before penning an April 2012 letter to House Oversight Chairman Darrell Issa, R-Calif., assuring him the rigorous scrutiny some conservative groups had complained about was “in the ordinary course of the application process” for nonprofit groups seeking tax exemption.
One month earlier, in March 2012, then-IRS Commissioner Douglas Shulman told a congressional panel: “There’s absolutely no targeting.”
2.) It’s also interesting to note how
Carney lays the president’s interest in this scandal on “media reports”
instead of knowing what’s going on in his own administration. In other
words, the president knows as much about this scandal as anyone who
watches the nightly news? Really?
Just as was the case with Benghazi,
the team surrounding the president is working over-time to insulate him
from the responsibilities of his own office and the basic level of
accountability that comes with it.
http://www.theblaze.com/blog/2013/05/13/obama-white-house-downplays-irs-intimidation-scandal/
10 crazy things the IRS asked Tea Party groups
The Internal Revenue Service admitted Friday to improperly targeting conservative groups for aggressive applications processes for tax exempt status in 2012, using the terms “Tea Party” and “patriot” as flags. Here are some of the things they wanted to know about those groups.1. We’re gonna need all your direct and indirect communication. “‘Direct and indirect communications’ is profoundly chilling of First Amendment rights, ” said David French, senior counsel for American Center for Law & Justice, which has been representing 27 conservative organizations met with IRS inquisitions. “It’s so vague as to be impossible to comply with.”
2. What do we need to know about your members? Nothing much. Just ALL THE THINGS!
3. Your present and past employees and their relationships, please.
4. No, family members of past and present board members and employees are not exempt, nor are their activities with other groups. Why do you ask?
5. If someone in this country’s free press has ever interacted with you in any way shape or form about your free speech activities, we’re going to need documentation of that.
6. By the way, all the insane, intrusive information we’re asking for is understood to be public once you’ve given it to us, so please include only the most flattering possible photos of your children and pets.
7. There are very specific requirements for completing and
submitting this insane, intrusive information we’re asking for. Does it
feel like you’re running hurdles yet, Lolo? 
8. Don’t forget to read the continued very specific requirements for completing and submitting this insane, intrusive information.
9. If you do not comply with these very specific requirements for completing and submitting this insane, intrusive application, you will go directly back to Start, you will not pass Go, and let’s face it, we will probably collect $200.
10. Please predict the future reliably. Thank you for your time.
All of the examples above are taken from actual IRS correspondence received by ACLJ’s 27 clients. There were many versions of the in-depth questionnaire sent to different organizations, suggesting there was more than one agent or one office involved. Though IRS officials blamed “low-level” employees in the Cincinnati office, which is the central IRS office in charge of tax exemptions, French said the abuse was far more widespread. ACLJ’s clients dealt with inquiries from IRS offices from “coast to coast.” Of ACLJ’s 27 clients, 15 finally had their status approved after 6-7 months with legal help. There are 12 groups whose status remains in limbo.
Update: I meant to add that a 2011 letter from Rep. Darrell Issa and Rep. Jim Jordan laid out 16 areas of the Tea Party questionnaires that seemed to overreach. Here they are.
http://hotair.com/archives/2013/05/10/10-crazy-things-the-irs-asked-tea-party-groups/
Why Did the IRS Target Conservative Groups?
Kevin Drum outlines what I take to be the emerging case for the defense of the IRS agents who applied special scrutiny to tax-exemption applications from Tea Party groups:
Roughly
speaking, what seems to have happened is that three years ago the IRS
was facing an explosion of newly formed 501(c)4 groups claiming tax
exempt status, something that's legal only for groups that are primarily
engaged in promoting education or social welfare, not electioneering.
So some folks in the Cincinnati office tried to come up with a quick
filter to flag groups that deserved extra scrutiny. But what should that
flag be? Well, three years ago the explosion happened to be among tea
party groups, so they began searching their database "for applications
with 'Tea Party,' 'Patriots,' or '9/12' in the organization's name as
well as other 'political sounding' names." This was dumb, and when
senior leaders found out about it, they put a quick stop to it . . .
The problem is that the explosion of
501(c)4 groups is a genuine problem: they really have grown like kudzu,
lots of them really are used primarily as electioneering vehicles, and
the IRS has been either unwilling or unable to regulate them properly.
So the fact that some of the folks responsible for processing these
applications were looking for a way to flag potentially dubious groups
is sort of understandable.
However, if I were accused of this thing, and this was my defense, I'd be looking forward to a guilty verdict from any semi-competent jury.
For one thing, though the IRS is claiming that they told employees to knock it off in 2011, they went back and came up with an almost equally troubling set of standards in January 2012:
The IRS adopted a more generic set of
standards the next month, but it changed the criteria again in January
2012, deciding to look at “political action type organizations involved
in limiting/expanding Government, educating on the Constitution and Bill
of Rights, social economic reform movement,” according to the audit
documents.
But
even if that weren't the case, this would be an incredibly stupid
defense. It's not like the IRS needs a way to flag the new groups that
were created in the wake of the Citizens United decision. They
have all the information they need to do that without any special
filter. They can search for the date of the application. If what
you're concerned about is that most of the new groups being created are
in fact thinly disguised electioneering vehicles, then what you want to
do is take a random sample of the new groups, review them, and see what
percentage turn out to be self-dealing or otherwised engaged in
inappropriate behavior.
On Monday, President Obama said the IRS had to be held fully accountable.
Instead, the IRS method for dealing with the volume was to take an unrandom sample. And
how did they decide that you deserved extra scrutiny? Because you had
"tea party" or "patriot" in your name. Since the Tea Party was a brand
new movement in 2010, they couldn't possibly have had any data
indicating that such groups were more likely to be doing something
improper. So how exactly did they come up with this filter?
There is no answer that does not ultimately resolve to "political bias".
There is no answer that does not ultimately resolve to "political bias".
If Tea Party groups really were driving much of the post-Citizens-United
explosion, there was no need to specifically search for the words "tea
party" or "patriot", because those words would naturally be
overrepresented in a random sample of new applications. The reason you
specifically search for those words is that you want to target those
groups specifically, and not, say, applications with "Progress",
"Organizing", or "Action" in them.
For that matter, even if they also targeted liberal keywords, it would still be just as big a problem. It's hard to think of any reasonable standard for extra review that starts with "I didn't like their name."
For that matter, even if they also targeted liberal keywords, it would still be just as big a problem. It's hard to think of any reasonable standard for extra review that starts with "I didn't like their name."
Further
evidence: given that they don't seem to have taken action against any
of the groups they hassled, it seems clear that this was, in fact, an
objectively bad filter.
Rather
than learning from this, the IRS instead did basically the same thing
again, apparently on the logic that people who dislike taxes or complain
about the government can't possibly be promoting social welfare.
Now,
maybe 501(c) organizations are a big scam and don't promote social
welfare nad we should get rid of them, as I've seen some columnists
complain. But this doesn't actually seem like the right time to have
that conversation. Rather, it seems like a distraction from the fact
that IRS employees decided that groups which advocated for smaller
government were somehow specially untrustworthy, and acted on this
opinion by singling them out for extra bureaucratic hassles. This is
hugely disturbing, and right now our focus should be on making sure it
doesn't happen again, not reforming the laws governing tax-exempt
organizations.
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2013/05/13/why-did-the-irs-target-conservative-groups.html
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2013/05/13/why-did-the-irs-target-conservative-groups.html
An Outlaw Tax Collector
On
March 22, 2012, IRS commissioner Douglas Shulman testified under oath
before the House Oversight Committee, which was inquiring as to whether
the agency was targeting tea-party groups and other conservative
organizations filing for tax-exempt status. He firmly and repeatedly
denied that any such thing was happening. “There’s absolutely no
targeting,” he said. A little over a year later, the IRS confirmed that
it was in fact improperly targeting not only tea-party groups but also
Jewish religious nonprofits and organizations inspired by Glenn Beck’s
9/12 Project.
Lori Lerner, the IRS official in charge of tax-exempt organizations, told reporters on Friday that her
superiors had been unaware of the actions, which she blamed on a
handful of low-level employees in a Cincinnati office. But the next day,
the Associated Press confirmed that well before Shulman’s substantially
untrue testimony before Congress, the IRS had convened a meeting with
its chief lawyer to discuss the very thing the commissioner said was not
happening. In early 2012, the IRS adopted a new variation on the
policy, flagging the applications from, among others, organizations
“educating on the Constitution and Bill of Rights,” according to an
internal report.
The IRS’s explanation was perfectly Washingtonian: “Mistakes were made.”
But
the agency’s actions do not appear to be mere mistakes; they give every
indication of being misconduct with malice aforethought, a campaign of
intimidation conducted by political partisans misusing government power
and government resources. If so, those actions are not only unethical
but criminal.
The
organizations that were improperly targeted were subject to
inquisitorial questioning in violation of IRS policies and practices.
The IRS improperly demanded that conservative groups disclose lists of
donors — 501(c)(4) donors can remain anonymous under the law — as well
as political literature, contacts with political figures and activists,
even activities of friends and family members not related to the
organizations in question. Jewish groups were quizzed about their
theological beliefs and their opinions on Israel.
There
are at least three separate categories of wrongdoing here. The first is
the targeting of groups that were believed to be critical of the Obama
administration or the federal government in general. The second is the
demanding of information that was irrelevant to the tax-status questions
at hand, which would have been wrong even if the practice had been
applied evenhandedly across the political spectrum. The third is the
misleading of Congress and the public about these practices.
The
IRS is one of the most powerful agencies in the federal government,
with fearsome powers that the Department of Homeland Security can only
dream of having. (Does DHS subject Americans to mandatory annual
questioning about their personal lives, family arrangements, finances,
business practices, travel, etc.?) It has a history of being used as a
tool of political retaliation, not only by the Nixon administration but
at least as far back as Franklin D. Roosevelt. An agency with that kind
of power, with access to sensitive information on every individual,
business, church, charity, and school in the country, must conduct
itself according to the very highest standards. The IRS does not.
This
episode is not the only reason we have had to question the rectitude of
the IRS’s conduct in recent years. Somehow, Mitt Romney’s tax returns
managed to be leaked, as did documents from American Crossroads, the
organization associated with Republican strategist Karl Rove. The misuse
of confidential IRS documents is a crime, and a serious one.
To
target individuals and organizations because of their political and
religious beliefs is a serious offense to our constitutional order. To
use federal employees, offices, and records to do so is the
misappropriation of government funds and other resources.
The
IRS is a bureau of the Treasury Department, which means that Treasury
Secretary Jack Lew bears some responsibility here, though the bulk of
the misdeeds seem to have been done before his tenure. Rather than
disclosing these actions voluntarily, the IRS has attempted to hide them
and to obscure the culpability of its employees. Lois Lerner told National Review
on Friday that no disciplinary action had been taken against any
employee, and then retracted that statement, saying that she would not
discuss the subject. But disciplinary action — at least — is clearly
called for. The IRS’s failure to be fully forthcoming on this issue, and
the lack of satisfactory steps toward reform and transparency, must
weigh substantially upon our evaluation of Lew’s leadership.
This
is a matter for congressional investigation, which will be forthcoming,
but also for criminal investigation, which to our knowledge is not yet
under way. President Obama and his Treasury secretary owe the country a
full and honest explanation of how this was allowed to happen. But if
Benghazi has shown anything, it is that this administration cannot be
counted upon for such assessments. It therefore falls to the relevant
oversight committees in the House and the Senate to flush out the truth
of this matter, and to recommend legislative reforms to bring this
outlaw agency to heel.
http://www.nationalreview.com/article/348084/outlaw-tax-collector The IRS admits to ‘targeting’ conservative groups, but were they also ‘leaking’?
A little over a year ago, I reported that, ”It is likely that someone at the Internal Revenue Service illegally leaked confidential donor information showing a contribution from Mitt Romney’s political action committee to the National Organization for Marriage, says the group.”Now — on the heels of news the IRS’s apology for having targeted conservative groups — NOM is renewing their demand that the Internal Revenue Service reveal the identity of the people responsible.
“There is little question that one or more employees at the IRS stole our confidential tax return and leaked it to our political enemies, in violation of federal law,” said NOM’s president Brian Brow, in a prepared statement. “The only questions are who did it, and whether there was any knowledge or coordination between people in the White House, the Obama reelection campaign and the Human Rights Campaign. We and the American people deserve answers.”
Recent reports indicate the IRS may have begun targeting conservative groups as early as 2010.
In a 2012 speech, Sen. Mitch McConnell noted, “The head of one national advocacy group has released documents which show that his group’s confidential IRS information found its way into the hands of a staunch critic on the Left who also happens to be a co-chairman of President Obama’s re-election committee. The only way this information could have been made public is if someone leaked it from inside the IRS.”
And so, the next question may be this: If the IRS was targeting conservative groups — as they now admit to doing — were they also leaking information?
UPDATE: In December of 2012, ProPublica wrote that they had obtained the application for recognition of tax-exempt status for Crossroads GPS, filed in September of 2010.
As the ProPublica story noted:
“‘As far as we know, the Crossroads application is still pending, in which case it seems that either you obtained whatever document you have illegally, or that it has been approved,’ Jonathan Collegio, the group’s spokesman, said in an email.The new form will require disclosure of a taxpayer’s personal identifying health information in order to determine compliance with the Affordable Care Act’s individual mandate.
“The IRS sent Crossroads’ application to ProPublica in response to a public-records request. The document sent to ProPublica didn’t include an official IRS recognition letter, which is typically attached to applications of nonprofits that have been recognized. The IRS is only required to give out applications of groups recognized as tax-exempt.
“In an email Thursday, an IRS spokeswoman said the agency had no record of an approved application for Crossroads GPS, meaning that the group’s application was still in limbo.
(Emphasis mine.)
As confirmed by IRS testimony to the tax-writing House Committee on Ways and Means, “taxpayers will file their tax returns reporting their health insurance coverage, and/or making a payment”.
So why will the Obama IRS require your personal identifying health information?
Simply put, there is no way for the IRS to enforce Obamacare’s individual mandate without such an invasive reporting scheme. Every January, health insurance companies across America will send out tax documents to each insured individual. This tax document—a copy of which will be furnished to the IRS—must contain sufficient information for taxpayers to prove that they purchased qualifying health insurance under Obamacare.
This new tax information document must, at a minimum, contain: the name and health insurance identification number of the taxpayer; the name and tax identification number of the health insurance company; the number of months the taxpayer was covered by this insurance plan; and whether or not the plan was purchased in one of Obamacare’s “exchanges.”
This will involve millions of new tax documents landing in mailboxes across America every January, along with the usual raft of W-2s, 1099s, and 1098s. At tax time, the 140 million families who file a tax return will have to get acquainted with a brand new tax filing form. Six million of these families will end up paying Obamacare’s individual mandate non-compliance tax penalty.
As a service to the public, Americans for Tax Reform has released a projected version of this tax form to help families and tax specialists prepare for this additional filing requirement. Taxpayers may view the projected IRS form at www.ObamacareTaxForm.com. On the form, lines 3-4 show where taxpayers will disclose their personal health ID information.
Low-level Scape-Goats or High-Level Operatives?
From
Fast and Furious to Benghazi to the newest revelation that the IRS has
been targeting conservative groups since 2011, the Obama White House has
consistently offered "low-level employees"
as their default excuse for any mistakes, miscommunications or
wrong-doings made from within the federal agency de jure. Of course,
upon further investigation and with no help from a deaf, dumb, and blind
Obama-mania media, these low-level employees always seem to be found acting on their own.
What
the White House and its apologists' in the drive-by media would have
Americans believe is that most of the largest and most powerful government agencies are vulnerable to not only major incompetence, but also to being politically hacked at any time by low-level employees.
The Obama White House would also have Americans believe that these low-level employees
work so deep in the bowels of federal agencies that it's almost
impossible to monitor them - let alone catch them in the act of planning
or doing something wrong.
But we're not talking about low-level employees that steal office supplies, play computer games or make copies of flyers for the next karaoke party, we're talking about employees'
whose actions could sway elections, affect U.S. foreign and domestic
policies, and possibly prove dangerous or even deadly to their fellow
Americans.
It
doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out, usually within hours,
where problems the size of Benghazi or the IRS originated within the
agency. And in the case of the Obama regime's hand-picked federal agency
leaders, the culprit pulling the strings is usually a high-level
operative for the regime, not the low-level scape goat used to cover
their own guilty backsides.
Fortunately
for America, the lies are becoming so obvious now that even
low-information voters are starting to take notice; and that seems to be
what's forcing a reluctant liberal media away from pushing White House
talking points and on track to doing their jobs - finding and exposing
the truth.
The Broken President’s Broken Politics
Being president was always easy for Barack Obama.That is, it was easy up until the time he actually was elected president. Then things got a little tougher.
In part, Obama’s troubles stem from the rigidity of his broken ideas. They admit of no compromise.
Consequently, he has subsumed his whole personality into an unworkable ideology that was dead outside of academia- and news rooms- until he resurrected it.
It’s the idea that a benign government of technocrats and academics can engineer near perfect justice at the trivial cost of liberty to most.
His life and presidency can only be understood by recognizing this Obama idée fixe goes beyond merely his ideology and merges into that of his personality. Because only when one realizes that he personally identifies with his ideology in the same way that he identifies himself as a father or husband, can one finally understand how tightly he clings to it.
It’s an ideology that he clings to, like some do guns and religion, despite a century of abject failure when implemented- as his own disastrous record as president shows on a fairly small scale.
Unlike guns and religion, however, which both have long records of reliability, his ideology depends upon the unreliable magic trick of redefining of words to mean the opposite of what any plain speaking person in the USA would understand them to mean.
For example, if you redefine liberty to mean that most everyone outside of the ruling elite has the same amount of “things,” then Obama’s materialist ideology ensures “some liberty for most.” Therefore, it is only when you have a static majority, a majority that can neither rise nor fall, that “good, kind-hearted, fat, benevolent people,” as Twain describes them, can assure honest poverty for the rest of us.
In that case, why wouldn’t good, kind-hearted, fat Warren Buffett pay a tax to ensure he and his fellows maintain an ascendancy that can’t be compromised by the majority? Why wouldn’t donor good, kind-hearted, fat George Kaiser go knocking on the door of the White House for a subsidized loan for his failing private venture? The first rule of capital is to preserve it in the same way that politicians first preserve power.
And thus, in Obama’s world, everyone is happy.
It was so much easier for Obama to be president when all he had to do was come up with sunshine words and rosy promises, as opposed to, say, executing unworkable legislation, controlling a suspicious congress, creating policy that gave to the rich in order to secure “some liberty for most;” or following a budget that isn’t even written down on a napkin.
Talk is cheap- as is writing- but when you claim the mantle of leadership you actually have to do something. And in doing something Obama has revealed to Americans the underside, unspoken ideology that belongs to the spirit of the Bastille, rather than that of the Boston Tea Party.
It’s the spirit that talks about immigration reform, but ignores immigration law -or not- depending on how the spirits move him. It’s the spirit that plays the part of constitutional law professor, while ignoring the duty to defend the constitution. It’s the spirit that tells banks to lend money to poor people, but punishes banks through extra-legal means- because they loaned money to poor people.
And those spirits create misgivings in most Americans; and those misgivings are strongly confirmed by the economic failures they have engendered.
When you measure those failures against the expectations that the liberal left pinned on Obama via speeches and skin color, and subtract out the deepening number of Americans who think the country is on the wrong track, we can quantify how cheapened the presidency has become. All you have to do is subtract the Obama expectations from the Obama result.
What you are left with is a remainder that confirms that this president is broken.
How broken?
Utterly, 100 percent, non-fixable broken.
It is interesting to note that the essential defect of this president was pegged by Sarah Palin early on. “But listening to him speak, it’s easy to forget that this is a man who has authored two memoirs but not a single major law or reform,” said Palin at the 2008 Republican convention while she was accepting the spot as vice president on the McCain ticket.
Obama still hasn’t authored anything much but speeches; speeches which contain nothing new; “not one” new idea, say his friends.
Even his signature healthcare bill wasn’t his own creation but rather a compilation of ideas from lobbyists and Senators.
Because if Obama authored legislation, on say, immigration, or the debt ceiling or his own version of healthcare- if he told us what he really thought of the Main Street American bank or those who truly occupy Main Street - Americans would understand how bankrupt the man is.
They only have to look to the funeral dirge from Benghazi, where the man, the president, hugged and consoled a widow, with false explanations- explanations that he knew were false- to shift blame from himself.
“On most days it's hard to tell him he's wrong about anything,” recently confessed one top Democrat about the Commander in Brief. That apparently applies to his lies as well.
All you have to do is subtract his words from our reality to see the result: broken.
He’s made a broken Washington, D.C., even more broke.
And despite the words- the now hollow words, not hallowed words- and brave promises from Obama, he’s not the guy who will fix the mess we’re in.
We have to do that all by ourselves.
But that’s the good news.
Really, it is.
http://finance.townhall.com/columnists/johnransom/2013/05/13/the-broken-presidents-broken-politics-n1593494/page/full/
Students Fight Back to Save Ten Commandments
Hundreds of Christians in a small Oklahoma town have decided to draw a line in the sand and fight back against a national association of atheist and agnostics who want displays of the Ten Commandments removed from local schools.“It’s Christianity under attack within our own country,” said Josh Moore, pastor of the First Baptist Church of Muldrow, Okla. “The irony can’t be missed by anyone who’s lived in this country or grown up in this country.”
The controversy surrounds Ten Commandment plaques are that are posted in a number of classrooms at Muldrow High School. It’s unclear when the plaques were installed.
Ron Flanagan, the superintendent of the local school district, told Fox News they had received a complaint about the Ten Commandments from the Freedom From Religion Foundation – an organization that has a long history of targeting displays of the Christian faith in public schools.
The complaint was allegedly filed by an “anonymous” member of the community.
“If the facts are as presented to us, and the Ten Commandments are on display throughout Muldrow Public Schools, the displays must be removed immediately,” wrote FFRF attorney Patrick Elliott, in a letter to the school district.
The FFRF said the displays are a “flagrant violation of the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment. “Any student will view a Ten Commandments display in school as being endorsed by the school,” Elliott wrote. “Muldrow Public Schools promotion of the Judeo-Christian Bible and religion over non-religion impermissibly turns any non-Christian or non-believing student, parent or staff member into an outsider.”
Flanagan would not say whether or not the school district would comply with their demands. He referred all questions to the district’s attorney. The school board will discuss the controversy at a meeting on Monday.
But hundreds of students have decided to stand up and defend the plaques by launching petitions and raising awareness on social networking sites. And lots of folks around town are wondering why a Wisconsin-based organization is concerned about the affairs of Muldrow, Okla.
“It’s a pretty big deal,” student Chase Howard told television station KHOG. “One person kind of put it out there on Twitter. A couple of us hash tagged it and asked people to get it trending. After that it just caught on.”
Benjamin Hill, 18, is one of the students who signed the petition. He said he understands why non-Christians might be upset over the display, but he said students should have the right to express their faith.
“I’d really like it if they would leave the Ten Commandments up,” he told Fox News. “I think they should allow the expression of religion in school.”
Pastor Moore told Fox News that the local interfaith ministerial associated printed 1,000 t-shirts emblazoned with the Ten Commandments – and many students plan on wearing the shirts to class.
“It’s not to protest or to be ugly,” he said. “Legally, they do have First Amendment rights. They can voice what they believe in. We are encouraging them to do that in a way that is respectful of others.”
Parent Denise Armer told KHOG she supports the students’ efforts to save the Ten Commandment plaques.
“If other kids don’t want to read the Ten Commandments, then they don’t have to,” she said. “But that doesn’t mean that they have to make everyone else do what they want.”
Pastor Moore said it’s not surprising that the Christian faith is coming under such a fierce attack.
“It’s promised in Scripture,” he said. “As believers and followers, it’s a matter of recognizing that and responding in an appropriate manner.”
The ministerial association also said they supported school leadership.
“It’s tough for them,” Moore told Fox News. “Their hands are tied from a legal perspective. We’re supporting them and ministering to them. We don’t want to alienate their or throw them under the bus.”
http://radio.foxnews.com/toddstarnes/top-stories/students-take-stand-to-defend-ten-commandments.html
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