Faith-Based

Pertaining to any of a group of faith-based initiatives, e.g. the Bush Administration's proposals to give religious charitable social-service groups federal grant money. Originally implemented during the Reagan Administration, these unfunded faith-based initiatives filled the void caused by many federal social programs that were eliminated or suffered severe budget cuts. The cuts were needed to pay for the federal budget increases for military expenditures.

Although seemingly a violation of the First Amendment Establishment Clause which established a seperation of church and state, faith-based initiatives are a convenient way to funnel federal money to primarily Christian organizations in return for unwavering political support. Most opponents of these initiatives fear the influence of the government on particular religious organizations and the impact of religious groups on the people they are trying to help - and rightly so. Conveniently, religious organizations can apply xenophobic discrimination in providing services based on faith.

Posted by: webster on 4/11/2006 at 5:02 PM | Comments (3) | Permalink

9/11

An abbreviation of the date September 11, 2001. On this date Islamic Extremist terrorists high-jacked four commercial aircraft and flew three of them into the twin towers of the World Trade Center in New York City, NY and the Pentagon in Washington, DC. The fourth crashed in a field in Pennsylvania.

This is the date everything changed. People are said to have either a pre-9/11 (Democratic) or a post-9/11 (Republican) mentality. A person with a pre-9/11 mentality believes we should continue to use diplomacy and respect in our foreign policy. Those with a post-9/11 mentality realize that, after the attacks, patriotic citizens are willing to give up personal rights to privacy - allowing the government blanket privilege to investigate, interrogate and prosecute an individual without the bother of Constitutional restrictions. This also allows us to scrap the Geneva Conventions which were a bunch of stupid rules anyway.

9/11 makes a excellent stop-gap when anyone questions the actions of a conservative administration.

Example:

"Mr. President, is it true that hundreds of thousands of women and children have died in Iraq even though there were no weapons of mass destruction?"

"9/11! 9/11! 9/11 changed everything! Do you have a pre-9/11 mentality? Next question..."

Posted by: webster on 3/29/2006 at 11:00 AM | Comments (10) | Permalink

States Rights

A term referring to an individual state's right to do what the federal government tells it to do. In the United States, a state may pass a law that differs from those in other states or from federal law. If that law doesn't meet current conservative standards, however, the federal government reserves the right to bleed away funding and grants until the state changes the offending law to save itself. One example would be marriage amendments - all states have the right to pass local legislation as long as it bans the practice of gay marriage (which is already illegal in most states but why not amend the constitution just to be sure - It's not bigotry if it's on parchment).

Posted by: webster on 3/28/2006 at 4:10 PM | Comments (11) | Permalink

Small Government

A term referring to the amount of power the people have over the decisions the government makes on thier behalf. Often mistaken to mean a smaller, leaner, well-run governement. A good 'small government' makes small-minded decisions based on small-time thinking within a small world view. See also Selfish and Narrow-Minded.

Posted by: webster on 3/28/2006 at 3:37 PM | Comments (13) | Permalink

Activist Judges

Any of a group of federal judges who fail to apply conservative Christian morality in their decisions. These men and women often refuse to strictly apply law as it was laid out in the American Constitution by our Anglo-Christian forefathers. Many of them feel it is their duty to look at the arguments brought before them and interpret law and it's application to the case.

Activist Judges vehemently refuse to take action against such clearly unconstitutional issues such as Roe v. Wade, gay marriage and personal liberties simply because they are protected by current law or amendments to the Constitution.

Posted by: webster on 3/27/2006 at 1:52 PM | Comments (103) | Permalink