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Lockerbie Terrorist Release Transparency Coalition Letter 9-9-09 <div> <div> TO SIGN THIS LETTER,
EMAIL TPETERS@AMERICANPRINCIPLESPROJECT.ORG or FAX 202-347-6849</div> TO: Senate Committee on Foreign Relations, John Kerry (Chairman) and Richard Lugar (Ranking member) Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Government Affairs, Joseph Lieberman (Chairman) and Susan Collins (Ranking member) House Committee on Foreign Affairs, Howard Berman (Chairman) and Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (Ranking member) House Committee on Homeland Security, Bennie Thompson (Chairman) and Peter King (Ranking member) RE: Lockerbie Terrorist Release Transparency Like millions of our fellow citizens, we were stunned and appalled by the decision of the governments of Scotland and the United Kingdom to release Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed al-Megrahi, the Libyan terrorist convicted of 270 counts of murder for his part in the bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland, on 21 December 1988. 180 Americans were killed in that tragedy and their families and friends miss and mourn them every day. U.K. Justice Minister Jack Straw has admitted that commercial considerations played a very large role in the decision to release al-Megrahi. We write to express our deep concern about the United States government s contacts with the Scottish and U.K. governments prior to the release of alMegrahi. What was the U.S. administration told about the planned release? What efforts, if any, did President Obama, Secretary of State Clinton, and other U.S. officials make to prevent this outrageous injustice? <hr id="system-readmore" /> President Obama has pledged: My Administration is committed to creating an unprecedented level of openness in Government. We will work together to ensure the public trust and establish a system of transparency, public participation, and collaboration. Openness will strengthen our democracy and promote efficiency and effectiveness in Government. Despite this promise, the Obama administration has declined to provide to the American people the information we deserve about our government s contacts with the Scottish and U.K. governments in the al-Megrahi case. In fact: Scottish Justice Secretary Kenny MacAskill says he talked to U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder, declassified Scottish government records show: <a href="http://edition.cnn.com/2009/WORLD/europe/09/02/lockerbie.bomber.qa/" target="_blank">http://edition.cnn.com/2009/WORLD/europe/09/02/lockerbie.bomber.qa/</a> The Scottish government told FOX News Tuesday (9/1/09) that the U.S. government refuses to allow them to release details of any communication between Scotland and the U.S. over al-Megrahi s release. A source with the Scottish government, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the demand was made in a letter sent Tuesday from U.S. Embassy Chief of Mission Richard LeBaron. <a href="http://www.redstate.com/moe_lane/2009/09/02/release-the-scottish-lockerbie-letters/" target="_blank">http://www.redstate.com/moe_lane/2009/09/02/release-the-scottish-lockerbieletters/</a> U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder made a grave and measured statement after
al-Megrahi's release. "The interests of justice have not been served by this decision," he said. It seems probable that he expressed that view more trenchantly in a phone call to Scottish ministers; Washington has refused to release the transcripts of the call for publication. <a href="http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1919989,00.html?iid=tsmodule" target="_blank">http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1919989,00.html?iid=tsmodule</a> The Scottish Government is willing to release the transcript of these communications, yet Washington has refused to release the transcripts . Who instructed the Embassy to demand that details of communications not be released? Where is the transparency? Like our fellow citizens, we want answers. We request that your Committee, in its oversight role, take the steps necessary to obtain the facts. Justice demands transparency. Compassion for the suffering families and friends of victims demands transparency. If President Obama and other administration officials made a strenuous effort to prevent the release of a mass murderer of Americans, transparency will reward them. We will be first in line in praising them and thanking them for their efforts. If the President and other officials did not make a strenuous effort, we the people have a right to know. We ask that you seek release of all relevant communication and information both within the U.S. government and between our government and the governments of Scotland and the U.K.. Should your request for publication of the relevant communications be denied, we urgently request that you immediately begin hearings. The trust of the American people is at stake: Government should be transparent. Transparency promotes accountability and provides information for citizens about what their Government is doing. Information maintained by the Federal Government is a national asset. -- President Barack Obama Signed by: The American Principles Project, Frank Cannon, President American Conservative Union, David Keene, Chairman American Values, Gary Bauer, President Americans for Sovereignty, Jeff Gayner, Chairman Americans for Tax Reform, Grover Norquist, President Bill Kristol Catholic Families for America, Kevin Roberts, Founder Concerned Women for America, Wendy Wright, President Council for America, Ron Pearson, President Let Freedom Ring, Colin Hanna, President Family Research Council Action, Tom McClusky, Senior Vice President Foundation for Defense of Democracies, Clifford May, President Freedom Research Foundation, Jack Wheeler, Founder Human Events, Thomas Winter, Editor National Tax Limitation Committee, Lewis Uhler, President 60 Plus Association, James Martin, President Western Center for Journalism, Floyd Brown, President </div>
Statement by Robert George on Tiller Death 6-3-09 Gravely Wicked "Whoever murdered George Tiller has done a gravely wicked thing. The evil of this action is in no way diminished by the blood George Tiller had on his own hands. No private individual had the right to execute judgment against him. We are a nation of laws. Lawless violence breeds only more lawless violence. Rightly or wrongly, George Tilller was acquitted by a jury of his peers. "Vengeance is mine, says the Lord." For the sake of justice and right, the perpetrator of this evil deed must be prosecuted, convicted, and punished. By word and deed, let us teach that violence against abortionists is not the answer to the violence of abortion. Every human life is precious. George Tiller's life was precious. We do not teach the wrongness of taking human life by wrongfully taking a human life. Let our "weapons" in the fight to defend the lives of abortion's tiny victims, be chaste weapons of the spirit." Robert P. George is the Founder of the American Principles Project.
Press Release: Senate must reject activist EEOC nominee 10-22-09 <h1 style="text-align: left;"><img src="http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2444/4034563381_76e1459a17_m.jpg" border="0" width="180" height="182" style="float: right; border: 1px solid black; margin: 8px;" />American Principles Project calls on Senate committee to reject activist EEOC nominee</h1> <h1 style="text-align: left;">Chai Feldblum's program of radical social change has no place in America's workplaces</h1> <div style="text-align: justify;">WASHINGTON, Oct. 28 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- Today, American Principles in Action urged concerned Americans to contact their Senators over the impending confirmation of Chai Feldblum to a five year post on the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC). "Chai Feldblum will use her position at the EEOC to pursue an extremist agenda that is out of step with the majority of Americans," stated Andy Blom, Executive Director of American Principles in Action. "Her bias and program of radical social change will lead to the targeted government harassment of religious institutions and anyone who doesn't subscribe to her Leftist Relativist 'values'." </div> <hr id="system-readmore" style="text-align: justify;" /> <div style="text-align: justify;"> Feldblum, a self-described "legislative lawyer" and "equality scholar" is in favor of granting legal and government recognition to gay marriage as well as polyamorous relationships (those involving three or more sexual partners). She has repeatedly stated her belief that such relationships should be treated equally with traditional marriage between one man and one woman. Regarding the place of the EEOC in penalizing individuals and organizations that do not follow her interpretation of discrimination, Feldblum has said, "Once a religious person or institution enters the stream of commerce by operating an enterprise such as a doctor's office, hospital, bookstore, hotel, treatment center, and so on, I believe the enterprise must adhere to a norm of nondiscrimination on the basis of sexual orientation or gender identity." The EEOC does have the power to pursue such penalties against religious organization, as in the recent controversy at Belmont Abbey College, where the EEOC issued a letter charging the College with discrimination for adhering to its religious teachings on contraception. The situation is still being disputed. "Chai Feldblum has made it clear that she plans to change the American workforce to reflect her vision of society," continued Mr. Blom. "If Feldblum is confirmed as an EEOC Commissioner, many of our most cherished institutions--religious or otherwise--may find themselves under attack from an intolerant ideologue who plans to use her position to pursue a political agenda with no respect for our tradition, culture, or principles. This nomination is bad for our basic freedoms and it is bad for business." "We urge concerned Americans to visit<a href="http://www.americanprinciplesinaction.org"> http://www.americanprinciplesinaction.org</a> today to contact their Senators (and the Committee hearing her nomination) and let them know that Feldbum should not be confirmed. Citizens are also encouraged to visit<a href="http://www.americanprinciplesinaction.org">
http://www.americanprinciplesproject.org</a> for regular updates and more information on Chai Feldblum's plans for America's workplaces." "American Principles in Action is a non-profit 501c4 organization dedicated to preserving and propagating the fundamental principles on which our country was founded--universal principles, embracing the notion that we are all, 'created equal, endowed by our Creator with certain unalienable rights, and among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.' Through our efforts, we hope to return our nation to an understanding that governance via these timeless principles will only strengthen us as a country." SOURCE: <a href="http://www.americanprinciplesinaction.org">American Principles in Action</a> CONTACT: Thomas Peters, Communications Director of American Principles in Action, +1-202347-6840, tpeters@americanprinciplesproject.org</div>
APIA Kevin Jennings Coalition Letter 12-16-09
<img src="http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2675/4190449139_bfbd9b1039_o.gif" border="0" width="550" height="184" /> Today this letter was delivered by our sister organization <a href="http://www.americanprinciplesinaction.org/" target="_blank">American Principles in Action</a> to the offices of Senators on the <a href="http://help.senate.gov/" target="_blank">Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions</a>. This committee has oversight over the Department of Education which employs Kevin Jennings. You are welcome to learn more about Kevin Jennings at <a href="http://www.expeljennings.org/">http://www.expeljennings.org/</a> Our ongoing coverage of Kevin Jennings and his organization GLSEN can be accessed <a href="blogs/tags/kevin-jennings/">here</a>. Any questions about our activities can be directed to info@americanprinciplesproject.org === Here is the full text of the letter: December 16th, 2009 Dear Senator, The protection of children is one goal that we can all agree on. And presumably, it is the motivating mission behind the Department of Education's Office of Safe and Drug Free Schools. But the innocence of our children is threatened by the appointment of Kevin Jennings as Deputy Assistant Secretary of that office. Through his actions and statements, Mr. Jennings has shown that he cannot be trusted with this position and should be removed from it as soon as possible. As head of the Gay, Lesbian, and Straight Education Network (GLSEN), Mr. Jennings is on record as promoting liberal sex education and homosexual themes to children as early as Kindergarten. Now, additional information comes to light regarding Mr. Jenning s association with GLSEN Fistgate Conferences, encouraging extreme sexual practices in children as young as 14. After objections were raised to that matter, Mr. Jennings announced that GLSEN presentations and presenters would be more closely monitored. But then, the following such conference included the handing out of Fisting Kits to children. The descriptions of the use of these kits are beyond imagination. To endorse this behavior, much less promote it, is unforgivable. Kevin Jennings must not be allowed to continue to endanger our children. The undersigned individuals and organizations ask the Senate Education
Committee, its members and every individual Senator to demand Kevin Jennings resignation immediately. Our children must be protected from the extreme and dangerous practices advocated by Kevin Jennings and the organizations he has represented. Respectfully, Andy Blom Executive Director American Principles in Action Keith Wiebe President American Association of Christian Schools Mal Kline Executive Director Accuracy in Academia Hector Padron Executive Vice President Coral Ridge Ministries Mark Wilson Founder and President Federal Intercessors Nacia Blom Executive Director Hawaiian Values.US Mario Lopez President Hispanic Leadership Fund Colin Hanna President Let Freedom Ring Matthew Staver Founder and Chairman Liberty Counsel Lewis Uhler President National Tax Limitation Committee William Greene President RightMarch.com Andrea Lafferty Executive Director Traditional Values Coalition ===
The Social Costs of Pornography 2-9-09 Recent technological developments in the production and dissemination of pornography, coupled with recent scientific investigations on pornography s impact, force all thoughtful citizens to reconsider the social costs of pornography. <hr id="system-readmore" /> What gets people to reconsider issues of public concern on which they have a settled opinion? Only rarely does a new argument do the trick, though often it should. Especially on moral questions, all but the young think they have heard most everything that could be said on every side, and whether after soul-searching inquiry, cold-blooded analysis, peer group pressure, or simple resignation most have pretty fixed views, both regarding their personal habits and regarding public policy. Still, no one who takes pride in being thoughtful and open-minded considers that quite the end of it: Great public catastrophes such as a foreign attack or an economic collapse surely force us to reassess settled assumptions, and less dramatically, technological change or scientific discovery might sufficiently alter the landscape that responsible citizens in democracy feel obliged to look at an issue afresh. The question of pornography is precisely such an issue ripe for reevaluation. Thoughtful scholars from a variety of disciplines are engaged in the task of reviewing its purported benefits and dangers and recalibrating the implications for sound public policy once its social costs are weighed. The technological change here is evident to everyone: as a result of widely available high-powered computing, expanded cable television, and the development of the internet, pornographic images and videos are readily accessible in almost every home and now indeed on almost every cell phone and portable device. The numbers are alarming, with estimates that as much as 35% of all content on the internet is pornographic; that two-thirds of college-age men view pornography with some regularity; that a majority of high school students visit pornographic websites, some trading obscene images of themselves electronically. Even those who make no use of these services experience the cultural effects of saturation, as ordinary television, respectable magazines, and popular songs regularly include provocative images, situations, and lyrics that a generation ago would have been labeled soft porn. Reports from those who have looked describe what now counts as hard-core in terms that would astonish the imagination and shock the conscience of anyone who is not a hard-core pornography user himself. Less well known, but in some respects even more impressive, are the scientific discoveries concerning the effects of pornography use on the chemistry and physiology of the brain. As neuroscience maps the workings of memory and desire and explores the brain s plasticity as the power of habit and addiction, long experienced, is now explained, in short it is becoming clear that pornography use can physiologically impede normal sexual function. At least in the case of men who use pornography to stimulate sexual release, it appears that, as with most addictions, something like increased dosage is needed to achieve the same effect in this case, usually images of increased perversity or violence. Meanwhile, the connection of sex and violence of pleasure and pain that is a noted feature of hard-core pornography, seems amenable to neuroscientific explanation in terms of synapses formed by early experience or repeated practice. From the perspective of neurochemistry, it is even unclear whether the distinction between virtual and actual experience is a matter of kind, not merely one of degree. In short, the more we know about the brain, the more suspicious we become that
it traps the images that cross its screen. That pornography is harmless to its consumers can no longer be presumed. While the technology of the internet and the advanced science of the brain are new phenomena, research on the old question of whether pornography use promotes sexual violence remains as unsettled as research on the deterrent effects of the death penalty. Recent claims attributing the decrease in reported rapes to easy access to pornography have not been disproven, but they can hardly be said to be established. While feminist arguments in the 1980s that pornography should be redefined in law as depiction of sexual violence against women did not succeed in overcoming the constitutional protection granted soft-core pornography on First Amendment grounds, they did reorient people s thinking, and in practice the pornography industry has apparently made the definition true by its increasingly brutal products. One consequence has been a focus of research attention on the general effects of pornography use on marriages and relationships, where both statistical evidence collected by sociologists and case reports from professional counselors suggest that ready access to pornography on computers has brought the social effects of pornography in from the margins of society to the heart of married life, with predictably devastating effects. It would not quite be fair to say that all of this has happened so fast that there was no time to reassess the pre-internet consensus reached in the 1980s that the Constitution allowed legislatures to suppress only child pornography and hard-core pornography, though they could regulate where and when indecent materials might be purveyed. Congress passed several laws in the 1990s regulating indecency and obscenity on the internet, intending to protect the young, only to find the laws struck down or confined by the courts. Even the prohibition against child pornography has been weakened by giving constitutional protection to animated images of children so long as no acts are performed by real children in making the films. But it is not only the courts. At times, the political will has been lacking to pass statutes forbidding the pornographic content that courts do permit government to suppress. Frequently, government won t even enforce the statutes that exist on the books. Constitutional doctrine remains a genuine obstacle to sound policy, I think, but often public sentiment seems more permissive or more resigned than the courts. While I for one am not ready to propose a comprehensive public policy on pornography not least because constitutional considerations suggest that any reform needs to be carefully navigated I am persuaded that all that has been learned in the last couple decades about the personal and social costs of pornography should impel thoughtful Americans to take a fresh look at the subject. For some this may mean becoming informed about the latest findings of neuroscience; for some it will mean facing the facts we already half-know (and our children all-too-fully know) about sexual materials that are easily at hand electronically; for some it might mean pausing to reflect upon what is now a forty-plus year experiment with the sexual revolution and what it may have taught us about the nature and meaning of human sexuality and love. What does not seem plausible to me is that anyone who is informed can insist that the pornography all around us contributes to human liberation rather than degradation, nor that those who are involved in its production, purveyance, or even its defense are the friends of freedom. James Stoner is Professor in the Department of Political Science at the Louisiana State University. He sits on the editorial board of Public Discourse. Copyright 2009 the Witherspoon Institute. All rights reserved.

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Lockerbie Terrorist Release Transparency Coalition Letter 9-9-09 <div> <div><br /><span style="color: #ff0000;">TO SIGN THIS LETTER,

APIA Kevin Jennings Coalition Letter 12-16-09

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