The War on Christmas that never was: How the secular humanist grinch didn’t steal Christmas

Long article from Salon, I’ll post a few excerpts:

Despite Johnson’s lamentations, one can in fact offer Christmas greetings without legal counsel. Christmas trees are permitted in public schools. (They’re considered secular symbols.) Nativity scenes are allowed on public property, although if the government erects one, it has to be part of a larger display that also includes other, secular signs of the holiday season, or displays referring to other religions. (The operative Supreme Court precedent is 1984’s Lynch v. Donnelly, where the Supreme Court ruled 5-4 that a city-sponsored Christmas display including a crèche, reindeer, a Christmas tree, candy-striped poles and a banner that read “Seasons Greetings” was permissible. “The display is sponsored by the city to celebrate the Holiday and to depict the origins of that Holiday,” the majority wrote. “These are legitimate secular purposes.”) Students are allowed to distribute religious holiday cards and literature in school. If the administration tries to stop them, the ACLU will step in to defend the students’ free-speech rights, as they did in 2003 when teenagers in Massachusetts were suspended for passing out candy canes with Christian messages.

In fact, there is no war on Christmas. What there is, rather, is a burgeoning myth of a war on Christmas, assembled out of old reactionary tropes, urban legends, exaggerated anecdotes and increasingly organized hostility to the American Civil Liberties Union. It’s a myth that can be self-fulfilling, as school board members and local politicians believe the false conservative claim that they can’t celebrate Christmas without getting sued by the ACLU and thus jettison beloved traditions, enraging citizens and perpetuating a potent culture-war meme. This in turn furthers the myth of an anti-Christmas conspiracy.

“You have a dynamic here, where you have the Christian right hysterically overrepresenting the problem, and then anecdotally you have some towns where lawyers restrict any kind of display or representation of religion, which is equally absurd,” says Chip Berlet, a senior analyst at Political Research Associates and one of the foremost experts on the religious right. “It’s a closed loop. In that dynamic, neither the secular humanists or the ACLU are playing a role.”
[...]
As Johnson notes, O’Reilly invited Sears onto his show to talk about his book, catapulting it to No. 20 on Amazon. “You can only push the American people so far, and then there’s a backlash,” Johnson says. “The ACLU in recent years has just pushed Christian America to the limit. From its earliest stage, the ACLU has deliberately chipped away at the legal and moral and religious foundations of our republic.”

The war on Christmas trope lets the right pretend to be playing defense when it’s really on the offensive — against the ACLU, separation of church and state, and pluralism, to name just a few targets. “The revolution against Christianity has been under way for a few years,” writes Gibson, “and now the counterrevolution is gearing up.”

The “Bridge to Nowhere” now a no-go

http://www.clubforgrowth.org/blog/archives/026997.php

CNBC’s Squawk Box is reporting that the “Bridge to Nowhere” has been officially defunded. However, this can only be seen as a small victory. The millions of dollars allocated for this pork project will go to the Alaska state government for them to spend as they see fit . . . instead of the money going to the Katrina relief effort . . . or, heaven forbid, back to federal taxpayers.

That’s one squeaky wheel

Via broadcastingcable:

As expected, it turns out the spike in FCC complaints in July was mostly attributable to Parent’s Television Council. But just “how” mostly came as something of a surprise.

After a steep drop in indecency complaints at the FCC in second quarter 2005, the number bounced back in the third quarter.

For the three months ended Sept. 30, indecency/obscenity complaints quadrupled to 26,185 from 6,161 logged during the previous three months. Almost all of that spike came in July (23,547), with only 1,716 complaints in August and 922 in September.

According to PTC’s Web site, the group filed a total of 23,542 complaints in July (10,775 against Fox and 12,767 against ABC). That would account for all but five of the FCC complaints for the month. Let’s repeat that. Out of 23,547 complaints in July, PTC claims 23,542.

Another generic drug update, rebranding update

Drugs that are (or will soon be) available as a generic:Oxycontin (oxycodone HCl controlled-release) is available as a generic now.
Ambien (Zoldipem) will be available soon.

 

Ditropan XL (Oxybutynin extended-release) is probably available now. The suppliers for the store I worked at didn’t have it yet, but they were taking pre-orders.

Rebranding update:

Medicare D: finding a plan, avoiding pitfalls

Basic steps for getting started:

Whattya mean, Medicare D won’t pay for this 70-year-old lady’s birth control pills?

Recently one of my coworkers was looking at the drug formulary for one of the Medicare D plans, and he said, “They don’t cover birth control! This plan sucks!” Then we all gave him a WTF look and he paused for a second and said, “Oh . . . right.”

A few minutes later, we went through the same routine when he noticed they didn’t cover drugs for childhood ADHD either.

We shouldn’t even have to ban this to know not to do it

Via azcentral:

McCain vows to add torture ban to all major Senate legislation
[...]
Speaking from the Senate floor, McCain said, “If necessary – and I sincerely hope it is not – I and the co-sponsors of this amendment will seek to add it to every piece of important legislation voted on in the Senate until the will of a substantial bipartisan majority in both houses of Congress prevails. Let no one doubt our determination.”

The ban would establish the Army Field Manual as the guiding authority in interrogations and prohibit “cruel, inhumane, and degrading treatment” of prisoners.

The Bush administration has sought to exempt the CIA from the ban.

McCain’s stature in the fight is enhanced because he was tortured while he was a prisoner during the Vietnam War. When the Senate voted to include the ban in the defense spending bill last month, it was approved 90-9.

Exactly how frightening would it be if Bush used his first veto to give the thumbs-up to torture?