By Rania Khalek | AlterNet

1. No free speech for you!

In 2006, at an awards dinner honoring the preservation of free speech no less, Gingrich unleashed the scary specter of terrorism to argue that free speech must be curtailed, which he admitted would ignite “a serious debate about the First Amendment.”

Gingrich said:

Either before we lose a city or, if we are truly stupid, after we lose a city, we will adopt rules of engagement that use every technology we can find to break up their capacity to use the Internet, to break up their capacity to use free speech, and to go after people who want to kill us to stop them from recruiting people before they get to reach out and convince young people to destroy their lives while destroying us.

His remarks immediately sparked controversy, leading him to write an op-ed days later in which he clarified that the First Amendment should not be used as a shield for terrorists working “to build ‘franchises’ among leftist, antiglobalization groups worldwide, especially in Latin America.”

2. Muslims don’t count

Remember last year when the right freaked out over Park 51, the planned Muslim Community Center in lower Manhattan? Because of its location, two blocks from the World Trade Center site, the right renamed the proposed interfaith, Muslim-run community center the “ground zero mosque.”

Some of the most appalling right-wing statements against Park 51 came from none other than Newt Gingrich, who made one bigoted comment after the next. First, he demanded that America adopt the same religious intolerance that marks the repressive monarchy of Saudi Arabia: “There should be no mosque near Ground Zero in New York so long as there are no churches or synagogues in Saudi Arabia,” he said.

He then proceeded to equate American Muslims not just to terrorists, but Nazis,arguing that building a mosque near Ground Zero “would be like putting a Nazi sign next to the Holocaust Museum.”

3. Yay for child labor!

Newt Gingrich longs for an era when children as young as five could slave away for 14 hours a day in a sweatshop. At least that’s the impression he gave whendeclaring to a crowd at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government that child labor laws should go.

“It is tragic what we do in the poorest neighborhoods, entrapping children in, first of all, child [labor] laws, which are truly stupid,” said Gingrich, adding, “Most of these schools ought to get rid of the unionized janitors, have one master janitor, and pay local students to take care of the school.”

Weeks later Gingrich doubled down:

Really poor children in really poor neighborhoods have no habits of working and have nobody around them who works, so they literally have no habit of showing up on Monday.

They have no habit of staying all day. They have no habit of “I do this and you give me cash” unless it’s illegal.

But not to worry, even Gingrich has his limits. When speaking to WNYM radio host Curtis Sliwa, he clarified, “Kids shouldn’t work in coal mines; kids shouldn’t work in heavy industry,” but he still supports having poor school kids scrub toilets in public schools.

4. Blame the gays

In October, during a campaign stop in Iowa, Gingrich called gay marriage a “temporary aberration” that “fundamentally goes against everything we know.” He reminded his audience that “marriage is between a man and woman” and “has been for all of recorded history.”

This coming from a past adulterer who has been married three times. It’s not the number of marriages or even the affair that makes this statement outrageous, but rather the hypocrisy. In his personal life, he has no problem disrespecting the so-called “institution of marriage,” yet when it comes to giving same-sex couples the right to marry, Gingrich is suddenly raging with concern about the sanctity of marriage and commitment.

And, as someone who constantly reminds his audiences that he’s a historian, it’s odd that Gingrich doesn’t know that polygamy has been the most common domestic arrangement in human history.

Gingrich’s disdain for LGBT marriage equality was on display one month earlier during an interview with Catholic radio, where he cast blame on same-sex marriage for the country’s economic woes.

5. Life as a white man is so unfair

Gingrich, like most conservatives, loves to play the victim card, like the time he called then Supreme Court Judge nominee Sonya Sotomayor a “reverse racist.” This was in response to a statement made by Sotomayor during a 2001 lecture at the University of California, Berkeley, School of Law, where she said, “I would hope that a wise Latina woman with the richness of her experiences would more often than not reach a better conclusion than a white male who hasn’t lived that life.”

However, Gingrich and his fellow conservatives conveniently ignored the broadercontext of Sotomayor’s speech. She was making reference to former Justice Sandra Day O’Connor’s famous saying: “A wise old man and wise old woman will reach the same conclusion in deciding cases.” Sotomayor went on to say that she hoped her gender and race would give her unique insight into cases that others on the bench, such as wise old men, may lack.

Gingrich was so outraged by her remark that he went to Twitter to air his grievances. “Imagine a judicial nominee said ‘my experience as a white man makes me better than a Latina woman.’ New racism is no better than old racism,” wrote Gingrich, adding: “White man racist nominee would be forced to withdraw. Latina woman racist should also withdraw.” 

6. Obama the secret Kenyan

It seems like it was ages ago that Gingrich told the National Review that President Obama was some sort of undercover Kenyan out to destroy America. That is the conclusion he reached after reading a Forbes article by Dinesh D’Souza that accused Obama of having an “African socialist” agenda that he adopted from his Kenyan father. From the National Review interview:

Gingrich says that D’Souza has made a “stunning insight” into Obama’s behavior — the “most profound insight I have read in the last six years about Barack Obama.”

“What if [Obama] is so outside our comprehension, that only if you understand Kenyan, anticolonial behavior, can you begin to piece together [his actions]?” Gingrich asks. “That is the most accurate, predictive model for his behavior.”

“I think Obama gets up every morning with a world view that is fundamentally wrong about reality,” Gingrich says. “If you look at the continuous denial of reality, there has got to be a point where someone stands up and says that this is just factually insane.”

The words speak for themselves.

7. Religious radical atheists?

In March, Gingrich gave a chilling speech about the frightening future in store for his grandchildren if godless liberals have it their way. Or was it Muslim liberals?

I am convinced that if we do not decisively win the struggle over the nature of America, by the time they’re my age, they will be in a secular atheist country, potentially one dominated by radical Islamists and with no understanding of what it once meant to be an American.

Who knew that one could be both a secular atheist and radical Muslim at the same time?

8. So what if women get paid less?

In the land of Gingrich, the fact that women still make less than men isn’t all that important. During a recent campaign stop at Harvard, Gingrich fielded a questionfrom freshman undergraduate Holly Flynn, who said:

I’d like you to clarify your stance on women’s rights. And I’d like to know what you’d do to ensure gender equality in the United States. Given that even today, women make 77 cents to every man’s dollar.

Not only was Gingrich dismissive of the pay gap, he even twisted the facts around to showcase men as the real victims here:

Well, the latter is going to change dramatically in the next generation, because more women are going to college than men. And they’re doing better than men and entering professions more than men,” replied Gingrich. “In fact, if anything, you’ll be here in 15 years wondering what we’ll do about men inequality and male unemployment. Because the people who had the deepest decline of income are males who don’t go to college.

His analysis feeds into a larger narrative that says women are rising to the top and men are losing out, which is most apparent in what Alice O’Conner calls “the myth of the mancession,” referring to the notion that the recession has been far more devastating for men than women. O’Conner notes that men lost a greater share of jobs when the recession first hit, but only because “they are disproportionately represented in traditionally hard-hit and better-paying sectors of the economy.”  

9. Guilty until proven innocent

At the Nov. 22 CNN Republican debate on National Security, Gingrich said, “I think it’s desperately important that we preserve your right to be innocent until proven guilty,” but only “if it’s a matter of criminal law.” He rejects applying these same basic standards in cases of national security — crimes for which he believes due process should be thrown out the window. 

Gingrich makes the bizarre argument that if we allow alleged terrorists due process, America could be nuked. His words: “If you’re trying to find somebody who may have a nuclear weapon that they are trying to bring into an American city, I think you want to use every tool that you can possibly use to gather the intelligence.”It’s unclear what this unlikely Jack Bauer scenario has to do with trying people who are already in custody.

10. Torture is not torture

At a town hall last week at town hall at the College of Charleston in South Carolina, an audience member asked Gingrich about his position is on torture. Newt replied:

Waterboarding is by every technical rule not torture. [Applause] Waterboarding is actually something we’ve done with our own pilots in order to get them used to the idea to what interrogation is like. It’s not — I’m not saying it’s not bad, and it’s not difficult, it’s not frightening. I’m just saying that under the normal rules internationally, it’s not torture.

I think the right balance is that a prisoner can only be waterboarded at the direction of the President in a circumstance which the information was of such great importance that we thought it was worth the risk of doing it, and I do that frankly only out of concern for world opinion. But we do not want to be known as a country that capriciously mistreats human beings. 

Besides the fact that (a) waterboarding is morally reprehensible and (b) torturedoesn’t work, there is no doubt under international law that waterboarding is indeed a form of torture, according to Juan Mendez, the United Nations’s Special Rapporteur on Torture. The U.S. Army Field Manual also bans the use of waterboarding, because it’s considered a form of torture.

[FULL STORY & Bonus 11th Crazy thing]

 (via:abaldwin360)

abaldwin360:

by Dave Niose - Psychology Today Blogs

In an attempt to illustrate the difference between government neutrality on religion and government bias against religion, the list below examines several popular church-state issues from both perspectives - neutrality and anti-religion bias. Bear in mind that nobody is suggesting that government should actually reflect an anti-religion bias, but the examples are provided in order to show what such bias might look like. Here they are:

The neutral action: Prohibiting school-sponsored religious instruction in public schools, whether in the form of Bible instruction, “creation science,” or any other means of injecting God or religion into public school curricula.

What real anti-religion bias would look like: If schools affirmatively taught that there is no God, that all theistic religion is wrong, then the Religious Right would have a valid claim that schools are “anti-religion.”

The neutral action: Prohibiting public schools from sponsoring any kind of prayer exercises. (Contrary to popular myth this does not stop individuals from praying on their own free time, because it only prohibits government sponsorship of such exercises. As such, alarmist cries that “God has been kicked out of schools” are entirely overblown.)

What real anti-religion bias would look like: If schools prohibited children from praying on their own, even during their own free time in a manner not obstructing others, that would be “anti-religion.”

The neutral action: Removing “under God” from the Pledge of Allegiance to the Flag, returning to the original wording of “… one nation indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.”

What real anti-religion would look like: Rather than just remove the “under God” wording, a truly anti-religion government would insert wording that would make an affirmative anti-religion statement, such as “one nation, godless, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.” As outlandish as this seems to believers, the current pro-God version seems just as inappropriate to many nonbelievers. This shows the wisdom of simple neutrality, where nobody’s beliefs are disrespected.

The neutral action: Ending government sponsorship of the National Day of Prayer, an annual event that was created in modern times by religious conservatives for the primary purpose of pushing a religious agenda into the public sphere. A National Day of Prayer that is sponsored by various churches, rather than the government, would be fine, but secular citizens (and many religious citizens as well) don’t like their government sponsoring a religious event like an annual day of prayer.

What real anti-religion would look like: An anti-religion government would sponsor a National Day of Blasphemy. In fact, a day in recognition of blasphemy, though not government-sponsored, already exists. Every September 30 infidels of all stripes from around the world celebrate Blasphemy Day, a day that recognizes and appreciates free speech and the freedom to criticize religion.

The neutral action: Scrapping the clearly religious national motto that was adopted in 1956, “In God We Trust,” and returning to the excellent motto crafted by the founders, “E Pluribus Unum” (meaning “Out of many, one”).

What real anti-religion would look like: There are many ways that a government could declare truly anti-religious sentiments.  A motto such as “In God We Don’t Trust,” for example, would be unambiguous in this regard.

The neutral action: Ending the practice of sending tax dollars to churches in the name of “faith-based partnerships.” Every year millions of tax dollars are funneled to churches for social programs and similar purposes. In practice there is little oversight, even though the money is not supposed to be used for proselytizing or any other religious purpose. The religious organizations are not even subject to the discrimination laws that nonreligious entities must follow. These programs are often taxpayer-funded cash cows for religious organizations.

What real anti-religion bias would look like: If government were truly anti-religious it would not only not funnel money to churches, but it would impose a special tax on religion, forcing religious organizations to funnel money to the federal and state treasuries.

[FULL STORY & SOURCE] - Content copied, pasted and edited from source story for brevity.