Thread: Hit Piece: Roy Moore’s ‘Radical Theology’ Is Under the Radar as Election Looms

Check out this hit piece on ALIPAC and Roy Moore! I was unaware the term "anchor baby" was considered racist since people of all races can have an anchor baby and the term refers the legal maneuver of having a baby on US soil for benefits and deportation avoidance... not a race or immutable characteristic!

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Roy Moore’s ‘Radical Theology’ Is Under the Radar as Election Looms

Dec 1, 2017, 1:27pm Dennis Carter



"His presence in the Senate would give a dangerous and undeserved level of credibility to his extreme views on LGBTQ people, reproductive choice, religious pluralism, and the Constitution."


Moore's campaign website highlights nine issues, pushing a range of policies designed to discriminate, remove constitutional freedoms from large swaths of the U.S. population, infuse Christianity into a range of federal policies, and dismantle the country's health-care infrastructure.










Roy Moore’s U.S. Senate platform on his campaign site is sparse and straightforward: The Alabama GOP candidate accused of having sexual contact with girls as young as 14 touts a Christian fundamentalist agenda that makes no apology about rolling back basic constitutional rights.
Amid myriad women coming forward alleging Moore engaged in sexual misconduct, his open hostility to democratic norms and his extreme positions on everything from immigration to abortion and LGBTQ rights have largely escaped the national spotlight in the final weeks of the looming December 12 special election.
Moore’s campaign site highlights nine issues, pushing a range of policies designed to discriminate, remove constitutional freedoms from large swaths of the U.S. population, infuse Christianity into a range of federal policies, and dismantle the country’s health-care infrastructure.
On LGBTQ people in the military: “Homosexuality should be against military policy as was the law prior to Bill Clinton.”
On abortion rights: “Federal funding for Planned Parenthood or any form of abortion should be stopped.”
On undocumented immigration: “We must … use our own military to protect our border. If a wall is our only option, then we should build it immediately.”
On health-care access: “Obamacare should be completely repealed as soon as possible. … Churches and charitable organizations should be encouraged to help the needy and poor.”
On education: “The federal government should not hamper the educational systems of the states as there is no authority for federal involvement under the Constitution. … Charter schools, vouchers, tax credits, home schooling, Christian schools, and technical training should be encouraged.”
Peter Montgomery, a senior fellow at People For The American Way’s Right Wing Watch who has tracked Moore’s political career, said the candidate’s inclusion in Congress’ upper chamber would help validate and legitimize an extremist vision of the United States borne from Christian fundamentalists’ “half-century grudge with the federal courts.”
“Even in the context of today’s Republican Party, Moore’s extremism stands out,” Montgomery said in an interview with Rewire. “His presence in the Senate would give a dangerous and undeserved level of credibility to his extreme views on LGBTQ people, reproductive choice, religious pluralism, and the Constitution.”
The extent to which Moore opposes constitutional and civil rights, Montgomery said, might be underestimated by media outlets covering the race to fill Attorney General Jeff Sessions’ former Senate seat.
“I’m not sure how widely it’s understood that he’s not just opposed to marriage equality, but that he actually wants to make gay people criminals. I think it’s hard for political journalists to grapple with the radical theology that underlies his policies and political agenda,” he said.
Moore, who this week blamed the alleged sexual assaults reported by the Washington Post on “the lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgendered who want to change our culture,” has been open about his disdain for LGBTQ rights. He wrote in a 2002 court opinion that LGBTQ people are engaged in a “criminal lifestyle,” and in 2014 sought a constitutional convention to stop marriage equality. Moore in 2015 instructed state judges to enforce Alabama’s ban on marriage equality, ignoring the U.S. Supreme Court’s legalization of same-sex marriage, leading to his suspension for the rest of his term on the court.
Moore said in a 2005 interview that “homosexual conduct” should be illegal in the U.S., CNN reports.
After admitting in September that he was unfamiliar with the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program, Moore has advocated for the U.S. military to patrol the U.S.-Mexico border to stop undocumented people from crossing into the U.S.. There’s no indication that Moore has proposed an immigration policy that doesn’t center on a militarized response to undocumented families entering the United States.

Americans for Legal Immigration, an anti-immigrant organization that uses racist terms like “anchor baby” and advocates for English to be made the official language of the United States, endorsed Moore, and the Republican touted the group’s backing.The organization in its 2017-2018 federal candidate survey charges that providing any path to citizenship for undocumented people would deliver “permanent political power to the Democrats and Socialists.”


Moore has been adamant about repealing the Affordable Care Act (ACA), and describes the federal program that subsidizes health insurance companies as “socialized medicine.” Doing away with the ACA with no replacement plan would leave tens of millions without access to affordable health insurance.
But Moore’s extreme policy positions would hardly isolate him in the Senate, Montgomery said, pointing out that GOP Senate hardliners have enthusiastically endorsed Moore before the sexual misconduct allegations as a potential partner in their political project to outlaw abortion, roll back civil rights, advocate for anti-immigrant federal policies, and undo the nation’s health-care system.
“He’d be one more vote for the worst policy proposals being pushed through the Republican–controlled Congress,” he said. “That’s why Republican senators like Ted Cruz and Mike Lee had endorsed him before the allegations about him preying on teenage girls were reported. They did know his record and they were ready to welcome him to the Senate. That’s a scandal in its own right.”

https://rewire.news/article/2017/12/...lection-looms/

Politics has become such a vicious sport. If I were Moore, I would sue this wannabe columnist and the Left Wing non profit that employs him. Just my own opinion....

Dennis Carter
Senior News Editor

Denny Carter is an editor and reporter with a decade of experience in local and national education news. Carter covered educational technology at eCampus News and county politics at The Gazette newspapers before joining the Rewire team as news editor. Contact Denny at carter.dennis@rewire.news.

The author of the article,Dennis Carter, seems to have bounced a bit, and he does not live in the State of Alabama so he should probably keep his UN funded propaganda to himself. Additionally most of the people that I know in Alabama that will be voting for Moore are women.

A little bit about rewire news which is a non profit??? How do they keep that status when they engage in producing political hit pieces?

Rewire (formerly RH Reality Check, long name Reproductive Health Reality Check) is a website focused on reproductive and sexual health from a pro-reproductive rights perspective.^[1][2] The website began as a UN Foundation blog in 2006, and became its own nonprofit organization in January 2012.^[3] In 2016, it was renamed "Rewire".

From the Daily KOS

Reviewing nonprofit media: Rewire (news about reproductive rights)

By xirzon
Friday Feb 10, 2017 · 4:52 PM CST
Both pro-choice and "pro-life" activists see abortion as an issue where human lives are at stake. Memorial to women who died from illegal unsafe abortions at major pro-choice rally in Washington, DC, November 12, 1989.

Today’s review is of Rewire, which is a news site focused on reproductive rights, written from a pro-choice perspective.
A good source of pro-choice advocacy journalism with a smattering of updates on other issues of concern to progressives

“Filter bubbles” of news consumption reflect divergent values. If you believe that abortion is murder, the fact that major US media are not continually reporting on the issue, and on the efforts by fellow activists, must seem like a grave injustice. Personally, I don’t believe that abortion is murder, so I can’t agree with that concern.
Carl Sagan and Ann Druyan have given one of the best explanations I’ve ever found, looking at fetal brain activity as the chief characteristic that defines being human. Because, like them, I don’t recognize the claim to personhood in the early trimesters of pregnancy as even based in any kind of scientific reality, the grave consequences of denying women the right to make this decision on their own are the actual injustice deserving attention in my view:

• the fundamental violation of body autonomy that any state intervention represents
• the association of the “pro-life” movement with terrorism against abortion clinics and doctors and intimidation/harassment of women
• the intended and unintended side effects of anti-abortion efforts on family planning and women’s health services well beyond abortion (e.g., contraceptive services, STD diagnosis and prevention, etc.);
• the increases in unwanted pregnancies (which in turn may lead to adverse outcomes for children and parents) and unsafe “back alley abortions”.

From that point of view, major media in the United States are not paying sufficient attention to the unholy matrimony between the Republican Party and “pro-life” groups (including associations with religious extremists who have endorsed anti-abortion violence). To the extent that media do report about the issue, it is usually about the work of politicians, not the real-world impact of their policy decisions. This creates a distorted picture.

If you share this perspective, then Rewire may be a welcome addition to your nonprofit news mix. Recently rebranded, it has been around since 2006, originally under the name “RH Reality Check” (archived contents). It reports chiefly on reproductive rights issues. With an ethos of intersectionality, Rewire does give some attention to issues such as LGBT rights, race and immigration, and economic justice.

Transparency and Compensation

RH Reality Check was part of the UN Foundation from 2006 to 2012. This may not be surprising once you realize that the UN Foundation (which is independent of the UN and supports its work) was CNN founder Ted Turner’s billion-dollar gift to the world. Turner is a long-time reproductive rights and population control advocate.

Rewire has since left the UN Foundation mothership and is now an independent nonprofit (tax returns). Like other nonprofit media, it is largely dependent on grants from foundations, which nowadays includes funders like the Packard Foundation, the Compton Foundation and the Ford Foundation [CSV file].

The Rewire website does not mention these sources of funding or provide a breakdown, and Rewire did not respond to repeated inquiries about funding and other matters. The tax returns do show a large increase in revenue from $1.18M (2013) to $5.95M (2014). At $181K, the compensation of President/Editor-in-Chief Jodi Jacobson is not unusual for a nonprofit of this size.

There is no Annual Report or other statement of impact, and as such, it’s difficult to assess to what extent stories broken by Rewire have impacted real-world policy decisions or activist efforts.

Positioning

While stating its pro-choice positioning clearly, Rewire also identifies with the Code of Ethics of the Society of Professional Journalists. Commentary and news content are distinguished, though news stories don’t shy away from value judgments. This, for example, is from a news story about Donald Trump’s appointment of Jeff Sessions as Attorney General:

Senate Judiciary Committee Republicans in Sessions’ confirmation hearings largely dismissed his abysmal record on a broad range of rights—including, but not limited to, voting, reproductive, and LGBTQ rights, all of which are intertwined. [Emphasis mine]

Politically, Rewire is most closely identified with feminism. In 2016, it published a column expressing concern about harassment of Bernie Sanders’ critics by online trolls (adopting the “Bernie Bro” term and drawing parallels to Gamergate), but far from being a pro-Clinton piece, the article is a pretty nuanced feminist take on the subject. Later in the campaign cycle, editor Jodi Jacobson expressed frustration with the possibility of a Vice President Tim Kaine given his poor track record on abortion.

Content Example: “False Witnesses”

Rewire’s primary focus is in-depth reporting on abortion, contraception, and women’s health. A section called False Witnesses highlights “pro-life” activists who are sometimes cited as experts, but who (according to Rewire) are promoting false information.

To take a closer look at an example chosen at random, Rewire calls Chilean researcher Elard S. Koch a false witness for his efforts to discredit the well-established link between anti-abortion laws and unsafe abortions which put women’s health at risk.

After being rejected without review by The Lancet, Koch published his study in PLoS ONE, a journal known for publishing, then retracting a paper referring to the human hand’s “proper design by the Creator”. (PLoS ONE uses an expedited review process which does not examine a paper’s importance.)

After taking a look at the Koch paper, the Rewire analysis, the Guttmacher Institute assessment, and the Koch reply, I agree that the Koch paper draws unwarranted conclusions from the actual findings.

To make a long story short, the combination of rising incomes / improving education, legal access to family planning (including contraceptives) and illegal access to abortion-inducing drugs have helped bring abortion-related maternal deaths in Chile down, in an environment that has never been very tolerant of abortion. The remaining extent of maternal deaths resulting from unsafe abortion procedures is unknown, because they are by definition part of a clandestine crime under Chilean law.

The Koch paper doesn’t refute the well-established fact that countries which experience large numbers of maternal deaths caused by unsafe abortions could reduce those deaths by legalizing abortions. Its findings only suggest that the long process of reducing unwanted pregnancies through family planning/contraceptives, rising incomes, improving education, etc. can also contribute to doing so.

As a “pro-life” researcher, Koch overstates what can be learned from the data, and those who use it for their purposes likely overstate it further. Nonetheless, I did not find the Rewire piece especially helpful in piecing this together. For example, Rewire doesn’t mention legal access to contraception and doesn’t talk about illegal access to abortifacient drugs like misoprostol, both of which are important factors in maternal mortality. Its essay reads like a he-said/she-said that doesn’t quite warrant the classification of Koch as a “false witness”.

Indeed, unlike a fact-check scale like Politifact or Snopes, a classification system that personalizes ratings by labeling individuals “false witnesses” is strongly predisposed towards a one-sided portrayal. This is perhaps understandable given that both sides in the abortion debate are “fighting for human lives” from their respective vantage points, but it’s an example of a slightly sensationalist bent that may not serve the most truthful journalism possible.

Content Example: “Fake Abortion Clinic” Investigation

Rewire also does in-depth investigative journalism in a dedicated section. A recent investigation, “A Window Into Texas’ Publicly Funded Fake Abortion Clinics”, is a good example. It is based on public records requests regarding Texas’ “Alternatives to Abortion” program and makes the case (with input from health experts) that this program leads to women being preyed upon by organizations that promise health services, but that are primarily on a mission to minimize abortions rather than providing care.
Given its pro-choice premise and use of loaded language like “fake clinic” and “anti-choice propaganda”, Rewire’s investigation is unlikely to reach the large number of Americans who support access to contraceptive services but not abortion, and who might be shocked by the taxpayer-funded proliferation of “women’s centers” that don’t provide much more than an ultrasound and a prayer. Leaving this aside, the story is an example of quality investigative work that sheds light on the consequences of Republican health policies.

Design and Licensing

When it relaunched as Rewire, the site shed a dated look in favor of a clean, pleasant and mobile-friendly design. Color and layout are used effectively to meaningfully divide content by topics and content types (e.g., news vs. commentary). As with many good designs, there are multiple ways to go to the same place, aiding discoverability of the site’s content and structure.

A lot of content is loaded on-demand, which causes problems reaching links at the end of the page, since new content may be loaded before you can click on a footer link (a familiar problem with the “infinite scroll” design pattern). The on-demand loading of content doesn’t work when JavaScript is disabled, rendering the site partially unusable without JavaScript. There is no commenting system of any kind.

The site prominently advertises an email newsletter called Rewire daily. Each email contains headlines and summaries of stories, linking back to the main Rewire site. The email database is likely also used for fundraising appeals, though I have not received one yet.

Content is under conventional copyright, i.e. it may not be copied or re-used without permission.

The Verdict

Rewire is without a doubt a useful resource for anyone concerned about reproductive rights in the United States, an issue which is especially relevant given the onslaught of legislative attacks in many US states and the hostile environment for women’s rights under the Trump administration.
As a news site, its commitment to intersectionality is reflected in its selection of stories, e.g., an in-depth investigation of reproductive rights may be posted alongside an update on the Dakota Access Pipeline. The underlying assumption – that different movements’ struggles deeply relate to each other – may benefit from more explicit explanatory context in some cases.
I was disappointed by the lack of organizational transparency (no reporting on impact, no financial breakdown, only a “we will get back to you” response to an email inquiry without any further follow-up) and with a slight tendency towards sensationalizing in service of its agenda.
Because of these concerns, I subtract 1.5 points off its rating per the review criteria. This results in a rating of 3.5 out of 5 stars, rounded up to 4 given that Rewire fills a niche of specialized journalism that is not currently occupied by other nonprofit news sources. As such, Rewire is now also part of the Twitter list of quality nonprofit media
https://www.dailykos.com/stories/201...ductive-rights

Some images from rewire.

Volunteers & Donors from across America needed to help Judge Roy Moore for US Senate



https://www.alipac.us/f8/volunteers-...senate-353065/