Quit electing zealots per Joan

Note:
I received a nasty comment concerning this letter. So, I came back to say I did not write this letter and even though I agree with some aspects of it but.......
People should be able to vote for whomever they want. But, it appears many did not vote at all therefore the result was that a radical right wing person is now in office representing heathen Native Americans. It's Maddening!
I think it's terrible people don't vote especially when its so important. Then there are those who vote but really don't really know who they are voting for. I think Jore is an exceptional failure of our representative election process. It's no-ones fault but those who didn't prevent this. I can only guess the Flathead is a mess. This tells me white people on the Reservation are pissed about something and the Natives don't care. I was born in Ronan and my parents grew up on the Rez. They moved back only a few years ago. Are they happy to be back? I will have ask them what the hell is going on over there.
Another thing about the nasty commenter, was this person quoted the founding fathers to support his or her point. It's an old game that does not convince me or anyone. It like the quoting the bible. Pointless, because everyone "intreprets" it differently. It's the same with the constitution, people "intrepret" it differently. I too can quote the founding fathers to support my opinions an what I think is truely American. The original pledge, Jefferson, Paine..... Hero's of the enlightenment.
Nothing bothers the right wingers more is the idea that the United States was a product of THE ENLIGHTENMENT.

THE LETTER
I certainly hate the idea of a Montana state legislator telling me what is “divinely instituted,” and what isn’t.My goodness, does Rick Jore make his legislative decisions based on his personal religious beliefs? Is he trying to enact those personal religious beliefs into Montana law for God’s sake? Laws that every Montana citizen is required to obey?What’s going on here?I remember that during the ’95 session when a lot of these missionaries got elected, an interim committee was actually formed to see if Montana’s churches and private social services programs could pick up the slack if all federal programs were curtailed!They couldn’t.Now, all these years later, Rick Jore is back telling us that federal aid to education is “welfare for education.” I hope all the parents whose children benefit from school lunches, Title reading and math programs, impact aid, and many other needed federal programs, are paying attention!When are Montanans going to wise up and quit electing these zealots to the Legislature?

By, Joan Hurdle, Billings

Apostle Paul and Women

• FORT WORTH, Texas - A theology professor at a prominent Southern Baptist seminary said officials told her to leave because women are biblically forbidden from teaching men.

  Southern Baptist leaders agree that the role of pastor is reserved for men, based on a verse in 1st Timothy in which the Apostle Paul says, "I permit no woman to teach or have authority over a man." The 2000 Baptist Faith and Message prohibits women from serving as pastors.

Why Why Why do modern women put up with this!

A Message to Pat from Paul in Helena

Message to PatPssssst — hey Pat Robertson,Pat, I’m speaking to you again…… you know….. The Big Guy.Well I guess 2006 didn’t turn out like we’d predicted. That tsunami we’d hoped for, you know, the one that was supposed to decimate the northwest US coastlines, just didn’t pan out. Well maybe your minions will buy a partial prophesy with all the flooding in the northeast. What’s that? No, I don’t have time to bother with all the suffering in Darfur, or the Middle East….. I’m too busy punishing Ariel Sharon for pulling out of Gaza. And I’m really sorry for not telling you to pass on that hot tip to George dubbya — the one about scraping off Rumsfeld and Rove prior to the election. It’s funny I didn’t see that coming. Anyhow, let’s both keep praying that the flim-flam profiteering evangelist thing keeps working for you — not like some of those other phonies, you know, Baker, Swaggert, and Haggard. With any luck, people will continue to buy the “conversations with God” scam and you won’t be exposed for the money worshipping, self-absorbed, faux righteous, bigoted fraud that you are. End Transmission……The twisted little voice inside your head.Paul Montgomery2326 Hauser Blvd.

1st Female Speaker of the House EVER

About time! We still have a long way to go. Women make up roughly 50% of the population and we have only a 16% representation in the House. Its better but not good enough.


WASHINGTON (AP) -- It shouldn't be surprising that it took more than 200 years for Congress to select a female speaker of the House. The United States isn't exactly at the forefront when it comes to women in politics.
Women make up a larger share of the national legislature in 79 other countries, including China, Cuba, North Korea and Vietnam, according to the Inter-Parliamentary Union, an association of national legislatures. The U.S. even trails a couple of fledgling democracies: Afghanistan and Iraq.
"When my colleagues elect me as speaker on January 4, we will not just break through a glass ceiling, we will break through a marble ceiling," said Rep. Nancy Pelosi, who is set to lead the House when the Democrats take over. "In more than 200 years of history, there was an established pecking order -- and I cut in line."
There were 22 women in the House when Pelosi was first elected to her California district in 1987. There will be a record 71 female representatives when she takes over as speaker, giving women 16 percent of the seats.

The Lord didn't say nuclear. But....something like that

VIRGINIA BEACH, Virginia (AP) -- Evangelical broadcaster Pat Robertson said Tuesday that God has told him that a terrorist attack on the United States would cause a "mass killing" late in 2007.
"I'm not necessarily saying it's going to be nuclear," he said during his news-and-talk television show "The 700 Club" on the Christian Broadcasting Network.


"The Lord didn't say nuclear. But I do believe it will be something like that."

HELLO!, GOD SPOKE TO YOU BUT YOUR NOT SURE WHAT HE SAID AND DID NOT GIVE MORE DETAILS. FREAKING INCREDIBLE! TELL ME WHAT DOES HE SOUND LIKE? STRANGLY SIMILAR TO YOURSELF I BET.
YOUR INSANE AND PEOPLE WHO WATCH YOUR SHOW ARE IDIOTS.

The Golden Rule

"Do to no one what you would not wish others to do to you."
Confucius
"Do no impose on others what yourself do not desire."
Analects of Confucius 15:23
"Do naught to others which, if done to thee, would cause thee pain: this is the sum of duty"
Mahabharata 5:1517
"Thou shalt love thy neighbor as theyself"
Leviticus 19:10
"Whatever you wish that men would do to you, do so to them."
Matthew 7:12

But, we all know how very difficult this is.
I copied this down by hand years ago and recently found it in my stacks of notes and research. So, I'm not sure the spelling and references are accurate. You get the point.

Hypocrisy/Letter to the Editor

We now learn that 95 percent of us have had premarital sex (IR, Dec. 20). Compare that with the roughly 27 percent of us that self-identify as evangelical Christians and one detects an obvious overlap.Not long ago I read that Oklahoma — a prominent “Bible Belt” state — has the highest divorce rate in America.In just the past year, two conservative culture warriors were “outed” by their own behavior — one a publicly anti-gay “Family Values” Republican congressman caught soliciting underage boys; the other the president of the National Association of Evangelicals, the epitome of institutional homophobia in America, now undergoing spirituality-based homosexual “deprogramming.”It all makes you wonder how many “pro-life” women have surreptitiously had abortions.So then, why do conservative evangelicals still feel entitled to legislate morality for the rest of us vis-à-vis South Dakota’s recently defeated abortion criminalization statute, Kansas’ and Pennsylvania’s attempts to outlaw science in science classrooms, proposed “defense of marriage” (whose marriage was under attack?) constitutional amendments, and provably inadequate “abstinence-only” federal educational edicts.I, for one, think it’s about time these folks get their own house in order before trying to legislate their morality on the rest of us.W. Craig Heymann1618 Lyndale