In his two years in office, Obama's approach to foreign policy has emphasized the limits of American power more than its reach.
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Everyone knows that two men on a wedding cake is a comedy skit, not an 'alternate lifestyle'!-Victoria Jackson
A poll released by Washington Post and ABC News concludes that 53 percent of Americans are supportive of gay marriage and equal rights for homosexuals in the US.
"Did you see 'Glee' this week? Sickening! And, besides shoving the gay thing down our throats, they made a mockery of Christians – again!
In a non-campaign stop for the 2012 presidential race, former NY Mayor Rudy Giuliani (R-9/11) lashed out at President Obama for “dithering” (or engineering a UN-led no-fly zone over Libya, instead of overcommitting the US military to another Middle East quagmire. Tomato, tomahto.), and mocked the President’s manner of speech with a stuttering impression.
From The Associated Press:Speaking at a Manchester Republican Committee fundraiser, Giuliani said he hasn’t decided yet whether he will again seek the GOP nomination. But he sounded a lot like a candidate, calling Obama’s handling of the uprising in Libya in the last week the worst foreign policy-decision making – or lack thereof – he’s ever seen.
When France proposed instituting a no-fly zone, “Our president, the leader of the free world, said, ‘A what? That’s hard! A no fly zone is r-r-r-really hard!’ ” Giuliani said to laughter.
Testosterone-fuelled ROCK critics...If you look at musicians, we've always been very respected for what we created, whereas a certain breed of [music journalist were never gonna like us.
In 2003, Piscopo was convicted of sexually assaulting a female church member during a deliverance ceremony in which Piscopo said he expelled the devil from the woman's body.
Shortly after the Democrats' "shellacking" last November, I phoned a friend in the White House who had served in the Clinton administration. "It's 1994 all over again," he said. "Now we move to the center."
...many in the Obama White House have concluded that the president should follow Clinton's campaign script -- distancing himself from congressional Democrats, embracing further deficit reduction, and seeking guidance from big business. If it worked for Clinton, it must work for Obama -- or so it's supposed.
...when you accomplish all this by parliamentary trick – after your national party has spent two years and more decrying Congressional reconciliation – when you deny the minority the right to participate in the outcome whether by compromise or protest, you cut through the cacophony of political-speak in this country and you transmit your sneering indifference towards democracy to ordinary citizens who do not normally pay attention.
...the Republicans have overplayed their hand in a way that seems startling even for them, and they shall inherit the proverbial wind..
“Julie’s an extremely sensitive person, and she has always felt like a mother to her plays, a mother to her characters,” Jeffrey Horowitz, a friend and artistic director of New York’s Theater for a New Audience, said Wednesday. “This is like a mother being taken away from her family. She loves that family. She wants that family.”
"Gender stereotypes remain deeply entrenched in today's entertainment and there has been no significant progress over the last 20 years," Davis was quoted as saying at the gala held at UN Headquarters by the Agence France Presse.
"What message are we sending to girls if there are so few female characters. If the characters are devalued, stereotyped, sidelined or simply not there at all," Davis said.
What’s next? Will crime-ridden Louisiana adopt the MAC-10 machine pistol, firing 1,000 rounds a minute? And how about Sarah Palin’s beloved Alaska, with its 1,500-pound coastal brown bears? The Marine Corps M72A7 anti-tank rocket, perhaps?
It is perhaps hard-wired into men that their eyes should be constantly on the prowl. Maybe it's an evolutionary trait, and our species has developed it to encourage the sowing of human seed in many fields. Women, by contrast, have evolved to be sure their mates gaze in admiration at them alone and nobody else. There's a famous story by Irwin Shaw, “The Girls in Their Summer Dresses,” about an estranged couple who decide to make up. They go for a stroll down Fifth Avenue, but break up all over again because the man can't prevent his eyes from straying. He loves his mate — yes, he really does — but you see the girls are so pretty in their summer dresses.
The plot of the movie is meh. It involves the lads and their posse being cycled through several unsuccessful and quasi-slapstick situations showing their cluelessness, immaturity and how women easily see straight through them. Meanwhile, the wives and their posses have a great time on a getaway retreat. Women seem to get along perfectly well when set free from men, but men seem uncomfortable without women. It probably all involves which gender has the greater need to be reassured.
Tennessee Jumps on the Anti-Sharia Bandwagon
While a number of other states have filed legislation seeking to keep Sharia out of the courts, Tennessee is going one giant step further by attempting to outlaw it entirely.(emphasis mine-BV)
Senate Bill 1028, introduced by State Sen. Bill Ketron, gives the state Attorney General authority to designate "Sharia organizations," defined as "two (2) or more persons conspiring to support, or acting in concert in support of, sharia or in furtherance of the imposition of sharia within any state or territory of the United States."
The bill states its intent is not to outlaw free religion, or the practice of Islam. It claims that Sharia presents a real threat to Tennessee.
Tennessee is just the latest in a string of states to consider anti-Sharia legislation. But unlike in some other states, where the language in the legislation avoids explicitly mentioning Sharia by name, Tennessee's bill goes so far as to call Sharia "treasonous" and incompatible with the U.S. Constitution.
Opinion polls show a steady rise in Americans' embrace of gay rights, and young voters solidly back positions their grandparents opposed, including gay marriage.
Five or so years ago, Obama's decision might have touched off fierce Republican criticisms. But reaction Wednesday was comparatively sparse and muted from mainstream GOP groups and individuals.
One exception was former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee, an evangelical minister who is considering a second try for the presidency.
"I think it was an absolutely boneheaded political move, and I think it was a boneheaded policy move," Huckabee said in an interview. He said Obama seems to say, "I don't answer to the voters."
Sen. Jim DeMint, R-S.C., said Obama cares little about the Constitution...
...In her latest comments, Bachmann slammed First Lady Michelle Obama's move as part of her physical fitness campaigns, plus decisions by the Obama administration proper, to promote breastfeeding.
"I've given birth to five babies, and I've breastfed every single one of these babies," Bachmann said. "To think that government has to go out and buy my breast pump for my babies..."
Andrew Breitbart, at it again?
The conservative blogger – who is at the center of a lawsuit over a video his site posted depicting a government official as racist – now has a cartoon on his Big Government site portraying First Lady Michelle Obama as a plump, hamburger-scarfing glutton.
In the cartoon, posted over the weekend, the First Lady is sitting at a dinner table with President Obama.
"I've stepped up my efforts to control America's eating habits by telling restaurants to lower portion sizes and fat content," a double-chinned Michelle Obama says, referring to her anti-obesity campaign, which celebrated its one-year anniversary last week.
"We find the 'do as I say, not as I do' approach of the Obamas hypocritical and ripe for ridicule. The First Lady seeks to enforce healthy eating on the nation, while indulging on snacks in public appearances," said Lash, pointing to the recent White House Superbowl menu, which included deep-dish pizza and buffalo wings.
...social scientists at Tufts University's School of Arts and Sciences have found that outrage talk is endemic among commentators of all political stripes, but measurably worse on the political right.
"Whether it’s MSNBC’s Keith Olbermann spitting out his coffee because of some conservative transgression or radio host Michael Savage venomously impugning the character of immigrants, cable television, talk radio and blogs overflow with outrage rhetoric, and even mainstream newspaper columns are not above the fray," they said.
Well, as I say...wait a minute. Keith Olbermann spitting out his coffee (it's called a Spit Take, o bright sparks of Tufts Uni) is by definition an attempt at a comedic reaction. We can discuss whether or not it succeeds as comedy in any given case, but a person who uses the spit take is at least trying to be funny. I would argue they're not even being satirical, but (more importantly) they're certainly not spewing venom. Just coffee, I guess.
But Savage, on the other hand...well, take a look at the most recent handful of quotes as tracked by Media Matters, just as some examples. Forget whether or not you agree with what he's saying, that's not my point (and if you're reading my blog, there's like a one percent chance that you do, anyway). Look at how he's trying to say what he's saying. Is he even trying to make a joke? Forget failing/succeeding, is he even trying?
My point is not that Keith Olbermann has never said anything that went over the top, rhetoric-wise. He has and he's been quick to admit it. My point is, rather than spotlighting the finding that the right is considerably meaner than anything on the left, these scientists appear to have thought they had to tie their own hands by assuring us of their finding, "Oh, but the left is mean too!"
Well, no wonder that's their finding...if they're counting a spit take in the same category as Michael Savage saying that immigrants expect free education, that they are to blame for the bedbug epidemic (and that leprosy, tuberculosis & cholera will follow in their wake). And yes, both of those are real.
It's that old demon bugaboo false equivalence, and unfortunately, it is very, very...President Obama. I do not think we will ever rise above this tragically dark cloud until we accept the truth that when we are talking about vitriol, we are talking, overwhelmingly, about the right.
This is not to say that no one on the left ever has their little slips of frustration, either (including me). But with the right, I think, it isn't little slips. It's their everyday mode of discourse, 24/7.
But of course, I'm not a scientist.
"The boomers have overstayed their welcome," declares the man credited by many with creating the phrase "viral video," Douglas Rushkoff, the author most recently of Program or Be Programmed, a book about digital media. "Generation X is finally at the stage where they can have the jobs the boomers had, and the economy crashes. There's nothing left for them...
O'Brien sits back in his office, guitar in hand, trying to make sense of his personal and digital evolution. First he thinks it through as a performer: "The Beatles were trying to be the Everly Brothers, and they couldn't quite pull it off. Elvis really wanted to sound like Dean Martin. But, you know, by failing …" He stops and starts again. "You have an image in your head of this iconic person. For me, it might have been Johnny Carson, where you grow up with him, and you think, 'Well, that's who I need to be' -- to realize that feeling I had when I was 8, sitting in my parents' house and watching him. And then things happen, and you think, 'Oh, my God, I didn't -- that fell apart.' But it's the failure to be that person or to completely follow through on what he did that leads you to something that's much better."
How's that Obama thing working out for you?
Moron.
I mean at least [Obama] had experience as a COMMUNITY ORGANIZER....Hahahaha What a JOKE.
I'm basing it on the so-called Duelfer Report. Charles D-U-E-L-F-E-R conducted the most comprehensive report on behalf of our government. And it was, nobody thought it was partisan. I want to be very clear: he didn't find big caches of weapons of mass destruction. But he found, and proved I think, that Saddam had every intention, and particularly to develop nuclear weapons, was developing chemical and biological weapons, and had a structure in place including nuclear scientists that he was prepared to support if he broke out of the sanctions, which he was inclined to do.
Wednesday, Oct. 6, 2004; 5:53 PM
Contradicting the main argument for a war that has cost more than 1,000 American lives, the top U.S. arms inspector said Wednesday he found no evidence that Iraq produced any weapons of mass destruction after 1991.
Duelfer's report said that no chemical weapons existed and that there is no evidence of attempts to make such weapons over the past 12 years
LIEBERMAN: ... these are not unfounded. Go read the Duelfer Report.
HUFFINGTON: There is nothing in the report that proves anything that you have said.
Dripping with condescension, Lieberman retorted, "I don't think you've read it, sweetheart."
Tennessee Tea Party Demands School Curriculum Not Focus Too Much On The ‘Minority Experience’
Sex and relationship monthly astrology: Virgo
How to attract and date a Leo man: A Leo man needs a woman who is grounded in reality and can help him keep his feet on the ground...
...Usually the royal Lion's romances do not last that long, when his emotional ideals of a grand and magnificent romance coming crashing to reality.
Sex will never be dull with a Leo, though, and they will master every move they know.
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Christian Bale has hit back at "patronizing" suggestions he picks movies that require him to lose weight, insisting it is "horrible" to drastically alter his body for extreme roles.
"To be honest, I find it laughable that it's considered some f**king gimmick -- it's so patronizing. For God's sake, do people not understand what a pain it is to do? It's as though it's some comment about, 'Oh, it's easy for him, because he's done it a bunch of times.' It's not easy, it's not fun -- it's horrible.
"I would never pick to do that, but (playing Eklund was) a part that I like and he's a welterweight and he's a crack head. I don't know about you, but I've never seen a welterweight with any fat on him - or a crack head. So it's just what you end up having to do. Somebody told me that somebody wrote something about my 'trademark weight loss'. I'd just like to p**s on that guy's shoes."
The Deepwater Horizon blowout and oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico was an avoidable accident caused by a series of failures and blunders by the companies involved in drilling the well and the government regulators assigned to police them, the presidential panel named to study the accident has concluded.
Now I look forward to seeing the terrible price which the politicians will make those companies pay.
Also, I look forward to having an orgy with Teri Polo, Olivia Wilde, Beau Garrett, Anna Faris and a 31-year-old Blythe Danner. Seems just as likely.
Folks who got their audio book version of President Bush's new memoir Decisions Points on Christmas were surprised to see chapter headings like "Bushit" and "Innocent Children Die" when they popped the CD into their computers on Christmas morning.
The Northwest Raptor & Wildlife Center says a young bald eagle found shot in the wing is under round-the-clock care.
The center's Matthew Randazzo told the Peninsula Daily News Saturday that the eagle's wing is broken and contains bullet fragments. He says it's unlikely the bird will be able to fly.
The male bird was found floundering on the ground near Beaver, about 10 miles north of Forks. The wildlife center in Sequim and the state Department of Fish and Wildlife are seeking information about the person who shot the bird.
Shooting a bald eagle is illegal. The birds are protected under the Bald and Golden Eagle Protection Act.
Bruce Boxleitner also returns to his role as Alan Bradley. It's smaller than in the original, but key, and Boxleitner wears it comfortably.
Those are the good points, now to the bad. I'm going to try to put this so as to avoid spoilers, at least of a specific plot turn, but I am now going to reveal something I haven't seen in the ads, so if you want to go, go now.
The problem comes when Alan's alter-ego shows up. Something happens that I saw coming (one of a couple). It's an inviting idea. But the way in which it is executed suggested to me that it was done quickly and cheaply (presumably when someone realized the movie's called Tron and he's barely in it), rather than being a part of the story from the very beginning.
Garrett Hedlund is well-cast as Flynn's son, but it's an unremarkable part. However, he does everything the film asks of him, and it works, so I won't pick too hard. He may indeed have some game, but I'd need to see him in a better role.
The only woman other than Wilde with star billing in the film, Beau Garrett, merely is eye candy.
I have no idea if she's got any "game," simply because the film doesn't ask her to display any.
And then there's Michael Sheen. Oh dear. Camping it up to beat the band, he resembles nothing so more than Dana Carvey impersonating David Bowie on Saturday Night Live.
This choice of direction doesn't work for me, but at least the part is small and over with quickly.
As for the story, it's true that there are places where it slows to a glacial pace, and others where it is hard to fathom who is who and what's going on.
I don't care. First of all, it's like a Light Cycle only sputtering momentarily before continuing upon its merry way (Light Cycles sputter, right)
And second, compared to what the first one delivered in terms of character and story, this
one is frickin' Lord of the Rings.
I mean, watching a Light Cycle chase in 2010. Totally worth the wait.
And I can't say that about every genre sequel I've seen this year.
(Further to that aside, the headline on the Salon review of this film is "A $170 million insult." Trust me, I know what it feels like to be insulted by a film series of which you are a cult fan. It doesn't feel like this.)
End of line.
An activist for a sub-group of the anti-gay group the National Organization for Marriage is speaking out against the use of the rainbow as a symbol for gay rights. "We are the real rainbow coalition. The gay lobby does not own the rainbow," she said.
Honestly, I am not worried about the tea party movement. They (and their effect on the GOP) are handing Obama and the Democratic party everything they should need to hold onto or even increase their majorities in the senate and house.
What I'm worried about is that they won't grab onto those teacup-nuts and use 'em to knock down some bodies. What I am worried about is that Obama will react to a mid-term "whacking" as Clinton did.
No, not by having an affair--by all accounts President Obama is deeply and passionately in love with his wife, and devoted to his family. But by resorting to the straddle-every-issue, don't-offend-anyone strategy that Clinton embraced from (at least) 1994-1996.
The tax-bill fight is revealing a crucial fact about President Obama's new, post-"shellacking" White House: it is increasingly being run by veterans of the Clinton era.
The significance of this staff shift is beyond the operational. The Clinton-era alums, by outlook and experience, represent a centrist, pragmatic, pro-business "wealth-creation" wing of the Democratic Party that flourished during the Clinton presidency in the 1990s.
Outside the White House per se, the president is getting key support from John Podesta, whose Center for American Progress has placed dozens of staffers in key positions inside the administration.
CAP supports the tax-cut deal, perhaps not surprising given that Podesta was once Bill Clinton's highly regarded chief of staff.
Like 95% of the people I know, I don't have a visceral (look it up) problem eating meat or wearing a belt.
Now, the trick in shooting deer is you gotta get 'em out in the open. And it's tough with deer, 'cause these are clever, cagey animals with an intuitive sense of danger. You know what you have to do to get a deer out in the open? You hold out a Twinkie.
That animal clopped up to me like we were at a party. She seemed to be pretty interested in the Twinkie, so I gave it to her. Looking back, she'd have been better off if I'd given her the damn vest. And Bob kind of screamed at me in whisper, "Move away!" The camera had been re-loaded and it looked like the day wasn't gonna be a washout after all. So I backed away, a couple of steps at a time, and closed my eyes when I heard the shot. Look, I know these are animals, and they don't play bridge and go to the prom, but you can't tell me that the little one didn't know who his mother was.
That's gotta mean something. And later, at the hospital, Bob Shoemaker was telling me about the nobility and tradition of hunting and how it related to the native American Indians. And I nodded and I said that was interesting while I was thinking about what a load of crap it was. Hunting was part of Indian culture. It was food and it was clothes and it was shelter. They sang and danced and offered prayers to the gods for a successful hunt so that they could survive just one more unimaginably brutal winter. The things they had to kill held the highest place of respect for them, and to kill for fun was a sin.
And they knew the gods wouldn't be so generous next time. What we did wasn't food and it wasn't shelter and it sure wasn't sports. It was just mean.
Tea Party Nation Founder: 'A Wise Idea' To Only Let Property Owners Vote
Judson Phillips, the founder of the group Tea Party Nation, has defended his comments that the Founding Fathers' original plan to only allow property owners to vote "makes a lot of sense" because "property owners have a little bit more of a vested interest in the community than non-property owners."
A teacher has been suspended after she gave her Grade 8 students a sexually-explicit multiple-choice test that included questions about anal sex, lesbian encounters and penis sizes.
Several parents filed complaints after students at Andre-Laurendeau High School, on Montreal’s south shore, were asked whether or not “blacks have bigger penises” or if they agreed that “all sexual positions are comfortable.”
Two sexologists contacted by QMI were split about the value of the test.
For myself, I have solved this political dilemma in a very direct way. On Election Day, I stay home. Two reasons: first of all, voting is meaningless; this country was bought and paid for a long time ago. That empty shit they shuffle around and repackage every four years doesn't mean a thing.
Second, I don't vote, because I firmly believe that if you vote, you have no right to complain. I know some people like to twist that around and say, "If you don't vote, you have no right to complain." But where's the logic in that? Think it through: If you vote, and you elect dishonest, incompetent politicians, and they screw things up, then you're responsible for what they've done. You voted them in. You caused the problem. You have no right to complain.
I, on the other hand, who did not vote—who, in fact, did not even leave the house on Election Day—am in no way responsible for what these politicians have done and have every right to complain about the mess you created. Which I had nothing to do with.
Joe Rehyansky: Allow Lesbians To Serve In Order To Give 'Straight Male GIs A Fair Shot At Converting' Them
Joe Rehyansky, a former official at the Chattanooga, Tennessee [emphasis mine, natch-BV], District Attorney's office, recently penned an op-ed opposed to allowing gays in the military, in which he argued that lesbians should be allowed to serve in the armed forces, in part because it would give straight male soldiers a chance to "convert" them.
Former priest accused of trying to hire hit man
...
In a murder-for-hire case worthy of a Dan Brown novel, a Roman Catholic priest has been arrested on charges that he solicited a hit man to kill a teenager who had accused him of sexual abuse.
Dragonboy from Dragon Boy on Vimeo.
It reminds me of Wall-E, inasmuch as it's a romantic story told without dialogue (less even than Wall-E), yet fantastically clear.
PS: I must thank Roger Ebert for putting this in his Journal.
Anne Hathaway stormed out of her birthday dinner with her parents and boyfriend, Adam Shulman, Friday when the conversation took a turn for the worse at restaurant Tocqueville on East 15th Street. One witness told us, "It sort of came on pretty suddenly. Everyone got pretty quiet. She left crying, and then her boyfriend followed her, but her parents remained." A second witness said, "She told the server, 'We just need a few minutes,' and then she walked out and didn't return." A third witness said, "Her father said, 'Let's not talk about it tonight; it's her birthday.' " A rep for Hathaway, who turned 28, acknowledged she was at Tocqueville but said the drama "never happened . . . The only time Anne left the table was to take a phone call. She did not leave the table upset."
"We have to deal with the world as we find it,"
From:
Top White House Senior advisor, David Axelrod, on why Democrats are going to cave on extending the tax cuts for the wealthy.
Why it offends me morally:
If I have to explain this, you must not have been reading this blog very long.
Why it offends me from a linguistic POV:
"As we find it" makes it sound like they, to use the common phrase, "were born yesterday." Sorry, no. Mr. Axelrod, we--the people who voted to put you (via your bosses) in the White House--we are dealing with the world as we find it.
Every single day, we wake up in that world and we do as best as can to play the only cards we're dealt. You and the President, Mr. Axelrod, are dealing with the world as you have (at the very least, through benign neglect) made it. There's a slight difference.
Do not go asking for our sympathy, get off the fucking cross and do the jobs we hired you (we thought) to do. You have two years until your next worker review, and we want to see a sharp improvement in your performance. Or we will get ourselves another guy.
This has been a warning.
Conservative pundit and Daily Caller editor Tucker Carlson perpetrated a hoax last weekend by posing as Keith Olbermann in a series of emails to a Philadelphia columnist.
On Tuesday afternoon, a set of emails surfaced on the Philadelphia news site Phawker. Phawker said that the emails showed the "100% for real" correspondence between Olbermann and Philadelphia Daily News columnist Stu Bykofsky over the weekend. In the emails, "Olbermann" talks about his boss, MSNBC President Phil Griffin, in hyperbolic, insulting terms.
On Tuesday night, Yahoo's Michael Calderone reached Carlson by phone. Carlson confirmed that he had, in fact, sent the emails posing as Olbermann.
"Could you resist?" Carlson said. "It was just too funny. The flesh is weak."
Lincoln Mitchell: From the Audacity of Hope to Timid and Kvetchy
It is strange that a candidate who was able to read voters so well has become a president who seems to think citizens simply want legislation. Voters don't care about legislation; they care about outcomes.
A chastened President Barack Obama signaled a willingness to compromise with Republicans on tax cuts and energy policy Wednesday, one day after his party lost control of the House and suffered deep Senate losses in midterm elections.
With his comments, Obama largely followed the lead of Republican leaders who said earlier in the day they were willing to compromise — within limits.
With unemployment at 9.6 percent, both the president and the Republicans will be under pressure to compromise. Yet neither must lose faith with core supporters — the Republicans with the tea party activists who helped them win power, Obama with the voters whose support he will need in 2012.
Keith Olbermann: Jon Stewart Jumped The Shark At Rally
Miller To Maddow On Gay Marriage: 'I Want To Be Straight With You'
The very latest congressional generic trend chart: GOP back in the driver's seat.
Police agencies across the country are recruiting thousands of civilians for a growing number of duties previously performed by uniformed cops, in an unusual concession to local budget cuts.
The positions -- some paid and others volunteer -- are transforming every-day citizens into crime-scene investigators, evidence gatherers and photographers in what some analysts suggest is a striking new trend in American policing.
"It's all being driven by the economy and we should expect to see more of it," says University of Pittsburgh law professor David Harris, who analyzes law enforcement practices. "As budgets are squeezed, an increasing number of duties are going to be moved off officers' plates."
You realize what this means...
(story via HuffPo)
Even Democratic strategist James Carville was forced to admit of Christine O'Donnell 'Now, this is one hip woman,' on CNN's Crossfire.
Keli Goff: Why We Shouldn't Blame the Bullies for the Recent String of LGBT Suicides
The kids doing the bullying are not really the ones at fault. The message they are receiving from adults is that today in 2010 it may not be okay to call someone the N-word on the playground, but it is okay to call someone the F-word.
Sen. Jim DeMint (R-S.C.) says that even though "no one" came to his defense in 2004 after he said that gay people and unwed mothers should be banned from teaching, "everyone" quietly told him that he shouldn't back down from his position.
He also implied that not banning gay people and women who have sex before marriage from teaching would be an attack on Christians, and defended his position on banning gay teachers because he holds the same position on women who have sex outside of marriage.
"[When I said those things,] no one came to my defense," he said, the Spartanberg Herald-Journal reported. "But everyone would come to me and whisper that I shouldn't back down. They don't want government purging their rights and their freedom to religion."
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