After the Supreme Court ruled that Fred Phelps can go around saying that God hates everyone except him, we expected the Supremes’ 8-1 decision to get a test run outside the White House at radical British cleric Anjem Choudary‘s “Shariah 4 America” rally. Choudary postponed the rally, saying he was told it wasn’t a good idea because the media had “distorted” his message. At left, Choudary’s plans for Lady Liberty.
Phelps’ extended family say they feel “vindicated” and are happy to be the “mouth of God in this matter.” Many see the ruling as a win for First Amendment free speech, however loathsome Phelps’ protests may be. Others, however, worry that the decision erodes the First Amendment’s other protection: free exercise of religion, like the right to a protest-free burial rite. Sarah Palin, calling Phelps’ Westboro Baptist a “wacko” church, tweeted that the decision lacks “common sense & decency.” NPR offers a peek behind the Westboro veil.
Meanwhile, in other news …
After Rastafarians and other prisoners were removed from solitary confinement for refusing to cut their hair, Virginia prison officials have now moved them to maximum security facilities.
Professional gossip Kitty Kelley says Oprah fired her cousin, the Rev. Jo Baldwin, for “talking about Jesus all the time.” Keith Richards’ daughter was arrested for scrawling graffiti on a convent wall in NYC. POTUS honored St. Sweet Baby James (and a few others) yesterday at the White House.
Four decades after his death, scholars are asking What Would Niebuhr Do? The Philly abortionist charged with running a filthy “house of horrors” may face the death penalty. Anti-abortion activists, meanwhile, are employing more in-your-face techniques (literally) in their quest to limit or outlaw abortion.
Mourners gathered at Fuller Theological Seminary in Pasadena to remember Joan and Scott Adam, who were killed by pirates off the coast of Somalia.
In NYC, lawmakers passed new rules requiring fuller disclosure from crisis pregnancy centers about the services they don’t offer (i.e., abortion and The Pill). Those pagans in the Catskills that insist they’re a tax-exempt religious group — despite what local officials say — won their first round in court.
Colorado officials are trying to figure out what happened after a 12-year-old allegedly shot and killed both his parents and wounded two siblings; The AP says the family home-schooled the kids and was deeply involved in their evangelical church down the road.
Authorities are blaming Islamic extremism for an attack on a busload of U.S. Airmen in Frankfurt yesterday that killed two and wounded two others; the suspected gunman, identified as airport worker Arid Uka, is said to be a devout Muslim.
Increasing numbers of German Catholics, faced with figures that predict 2/3 of German churches won’t have a priest by 2020, want to say Auf Wiedersehen to priestly celibacy. George Weigel isn’t buying it.
Search and rescue squads have called off the search for survivors in the New Zealand earthquake, including dozens who are believed to be buried in the rubble of collapsed churches in Christchurch.
Hundreds of Pakistani Christians took to the streets to protest the assasination of the sole non-Muslim in the government cabinet, who oversaw minority religious affairs and opposed the country’s controversial blasphemy law.
