Current Events

Nobody seems to believe me when I say that’s on the agenda of at least some religious right… but this is the second time I’ve seen it in print lately… this time in a Salon article about millionaire Howard Ahmanson Jr., a religious fanatic who has funded every major right wing cause from the recall election in California, to the schism in the Episcopal church to Bush’s 2000 presidential campaign.
Right there on the second page of the article:

“It was then that he found his salvation in the church and in R.J. Rushdoony, a prolific author and an influential theologian of the far right. Rushdoony is the father of Christian Reconstructionism, a strange variant of Calvinism that stresses waging political struggle to put the earth, and in particular the U.S., under the control of biblical law. In his 30-some books, he advocated everything from the end of government-administered social welfare and public schools to the execution of homosexuals. For around 20 years, until Rushdoony’s death in 1995, Ahmanson served on the board of his think tank, Chalcedon, granting it a total of $1 million. In exchange, Rushdoony acted as Ahmanson’s spiritual advisor, imbuing him with a sense of order and a mission.”

MIAMI — U.S. Immigration officers began fingerprinting and photographing tens of thousands of visitors arriving from certain other countries Monday, in what federal authorities described as a sophisticated new security measure to monitor who enters the country and how long they stay.
Citizens of 27 countries, including Australia, Canada, Japan, New Zealand, Singapore and most European nations, are exempt from the program if they are visiting as tourists for fewer than 90 days.

Wow, is this extreme. We can’t do better on the intelligence end, to prevent this from being necessary?