Politically active pastors must keep up the pretense that they aren’t endorsing candidates or risk their churches’ tax-exempt status. But that was before Pulpit Freedom Sunday, which will find at least 33 pastors this weekend making their picks public and practically inviting the Internal Revenue Service to come after them. “What they’re doing is talking to their congregations about biblical issues related to candidates and elections, and they believe they have the constitutional right to do that,” said Erik Stanley, senior legal counsel with the sponsoring Alliance Defense Fund.
“Historically cautious and prudent, the Republican Party in recent years has become, instead, radical — doctrinally anti-tax, any tax of any sort for any reason,” columnist Tom Teepen wrote, responding to the criticisms of Joe Biden for saying that sometimes stepping up to a tax increase could be the patriotic thing to do.
“The Bush tax cuts, weighted to the wealthy, were supposed to ignite such a boom your ears would hurt. Instead, they have us again nearing record deficits, a factor in the current financial collapse and a leading complication for any effort at recovery.
“You will recall the president told us that rather than paying for war, our duty was to go shopping. We have put two wars on the cuff and now are putting a trillion dollars in buyouts there, too — dumping ourselves and our future into still deeper hock to the Chinese and the Mideast oil states.
It is difficult to see all that as patriotic.”
Remember the calls for a presidential debate on science? Well, Science Debate 2008 didn’t end up getting a live event, but its “top 14 science questions facing America” get extensive answers from John McCain and Barack Obama on topics from water to stem cell research to biosecurity.
Some opponents of the USD 259 bond issue have argued that the district shouldn’t need more classroom space because its enrollment has been fairly flat since the 2000 bond issue. But that ignores the addition of all-day kindergarten throughout the district since 2000, increases in students who speak English as a second language, and the district’s push to lower class sizes — all of which requires more classrooms. The district’s latest enrollment numbers, which are up by 441 students, also show that the northeast and southeast areas of the district are experiencing rapid growth and school overcrowding. That’s where the district wants and needs to build new schools.
Politically active pastors must keep up the pretense that they aren’t endorsing candidates or risk their churches’ tax-exempt status. But that was before Pulpit Freedom Sunday, which will find at least 33 pastors this weekend making their picks public and practically inviting the Internal Revenue Service to come after them. “What they’re doing is talking to their congregations about biblical issues related to candidates and elections, and they believe they have the constitutional right to do that,” said Erik Stanley, senior legal counsel with the sponsoring Alliance Defense Fund.
