With the liberal anti-war churches in Central Ohio questioning the tax exempt status of the World Harvest Church other conservative churches would this their desired "solution"? Yet once again when it cones to the IRS examining the status of All Saints Church in California who's pastor gave a "anti-war sermon" why is this church not held to the same standard?

Things couldn't be complete without the Jesse Jackson making an appearance. It would appear as though this takes us back to the long standing double standard that we've watched the liberals invoke time and time again; "do as I say not as I do".

In God's Name: As Exemptions Grow, Religion Outweighs Regulation

At any moment, state inspectors can step uninvited into one of the three child care centers that Ethel White runs in Auburn, Ala., to make sure they meet state requirements intended to ensure that the children are safe. There must be continuing training for the staff. Her nurseries must have two sinks, one exclusively for food preparation. All cabinets must have safety locks. Medications for the children must be kept under lock and key, and refrigerated.

The Rev. Ray Fuson of the Harvest Temple Church of God in Montgomery, Ala., does not have to worry about unannounced state inspections at the day care center his church runs. Alabama exempts church day care programs from state licensing requirements, which were tightened after almost a dozen children died in licensed and unlicensed day care centers in the state in two years.

The differences do not end there. As an employer, Ms. White must comply with the civil rights laws; if employees feel mistreated, they can take the center to court. Religious organizations, including Pastor Fuson’s, are protected by the courts from almost all lawsuits filed by their ministers or other religious staff members, no matter how unfairly those employees think they have been treated .

Will this alleged "top Russian prosecutor" and the "Council of Europe" pass the smell test?

With the 13 contract style killings of jounarlist in the last 6 years including the death of Paul Klebnikov, the U.S.-born editor of the Russian edition of Forbes magazine why all of a sudden is this such a high priority? We will continue to follow this story as it developes.

Slain Moscow writer was covering torture

Oct. 8, 2006, 10:59AM
By HENRY MEYER Associated Press Writer

MOSCOW — A journalist shot to death in an apparent contract killing was about to publish a story about torture and abductions in Chechnya when she was slain, her editor said Sunday, as Russia's top prosecutor took charge of the case.

Anna Politkovskaya, famed for her unsparing coverage of abuses against civilians in Chechnya in the outspoken newspaper Novaya Gazeta, was found dead Saturday in the elevator of her Moscow apartment building. She had two gunshot wounds _ one to the head.

Politkovskaya, 48, had collected witness accounts and photos of tortured bodies and the article had been due for publication Monday, her newspaper's editors said.

"We never got the article, but she had evidence about these (abducted) people and there were photographs," Novaya Gazeta's deputy editor, Vitaly Yerushensky, told Ekho Moskvy radio.

In a recent radio interview, Politkovskaya said that she was a witness in a criminal case against Moscow-backed Chechen Prime Minister Ramzan Kadyrov, whose security forces have been accused of kidnapping civilians and other abuses.

"These are cases of kidnappings, including one criminal case concerning an abduction personally involving Ramzan Kadyrov, a kidnapping of two people, whose photographs are now on my desk," she said in comments rebroadcast Sunday by Ekho Moskvy.

In the interview, which Ekho Mosvky said had been granted to Radio Free Europe, she said that the victims, an ethnic Russian and a Chechen, were "rounded up, kidnapped for a time and killed. Their bodies showed signs of serious torture."

Politkovskaya was one of the most persistent critics of Kadyrov's security forces, but she had crossed many powerful people, including in the Russian military, with her investigative reporting and human rights advocacy.

In Washington, State Department spokesman Sean McCormack said the United States was shocked and profoundly saddened by the murder of a journalist who devoted much of her career to "shining a light on human rights abuses and other atrocities of the war in Chechnya" and the plight of Chechen refugees.

"One thing that immediately comes to mind ... is that Anna had many enemies, said Joel Simon, executive director of the New-York based CPJ.

On its Web site, the biweekly Novaya Gazeta wrote that the killing was either revenge by Kadyrov or an attempt to discredit him.

The execution-style killing underlined the increasingly dangerous environment for journalists working in Russia since President Vladimir Putin came to power in 2000, launching a crackdown on media freedoms. Her death brings to at least 13 the number of journalists killed in contract-style killings in the past six years, according to the New-York based Committee to Protect Journalists.

Politkovskaya's death was the most high-profile slaying of a journalist in Russia since the July 2004 assassination of Paul Klebnikov, the U.S.-born editor of the Russian edition of Forbes magazine.

Prosecutor-General Yury Chaika on Sunday took personal charge of the investigation, his office said, citing the "particular importance (of the case) and wide resonance within society."

The Interfax news agency quoted law enforcement sources as saying that investigators would include the "Chechen trail" as part of their probe into Politkovskaya's death.

Her colleagues at the hard-hitting newspaper said that they would launch their own investigation, reflecting skepticism that the official inquiry would ever find the killers.

Former Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev condemned the journalist's killing as "a blow to the entire, democratic, independent press."

The 46-nation Council of Europe, a human rights watchdog whose executive body is currently led by Russia, called for her death to be investigated quickly and convincingly.

Chechen President Alu Alkhanov said he was "shocked" at Politkovskaya's killing, Interfax reported.

Politkovskaya had come under threat repeatedly. In 2004, she fell seriously ill with symptoms of food poisoning after drinking tea on a flight from Moscow to southern Russia during the school hostage crisis in Beslan. Her colleagues suspected the incident was an attempt on her life.

Politkovskaya, who had two adult children, began reporting on Chechnya in 1999 during Russia's second military campaign there, concentrating less on military engagements than on the human side of the war.

Despite the end of large-scale fighting, Russia remains locked in guerrilla conflict with a hardcore of separatist rebels and allegations of kidnappings, torture and murder of civilians blamed on Russian forces and their Chechen allies persist.

Believe it or not I was able to find video of the alleged offending behavior, I was also able to find the numerous beheadings that are carried out under this so-called religion of peace.

Let's also not forget the numerous op-ed images insulting christians and jews that appear within the pages of the arab world's newspapers.

Danish TV shows cartoons mocking Prophet Mohammad

Would you like to believe you can change the stripes of a former KGB agent?

Murder in Moscow

The Putin era of brutality claims a victim of rare courage.

Sunday, October 8, 2006; Page B06

ANNA POLITKOVSKAYA, who was murdered in her apartment building yesterday, knew it was dangerous to be an honest reporter in President Vladimir Putin's Russia. Yet, as he wielded a combination of blandishments and bullying to gradually reimpose authoritarianism on his country, Ms. Politkovskaya, 48 and the mother of two, never yielded. Whether reporting on Mr. Putin's dirty war in the separatist region of Chechnya or on the diminution of freedom at home in Moscow, she remained, if not unafraid, unbowed.

Chances are Ms. Politkovskaya's murderer will never be officially identified. At least a dozen other journalists have been murdered in contract-style killings in the past six years, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists, and not one of those murders has been solved. Human rights advocates and pro-democracy politicians have been struck down in the same way.

Yet it is quite possible, without performing any detective work, to say what is ultimately responsible for these deaths: It is the climate of brutality that has flourished under Mr. Putin. A former KGB agent himself, he inherited an imperfect democracy and systematically undermined its institutions. The media, political parties, local government, private business -- each in turn was neutered. Loyalty to Mr. Putin has become the quality that matters most, and any opponent is labeled an enemy, to be bankrupted, imprisoned or worse. Meanwhile, ugly nationalism was permitted to flourish.

Now you can see these same values being applied to foreign policy. The independent nation of Georgia, to Russia's south, has not displayed adequate fealty in Mr. Putin's view; it wants to be a democracy, with normal ties to the West. So the czar has launched an ugly campaign of threats against the country and the hundreds of thousands of ethnic Georgians who live in Russia. It is a dangerous moment.

Through all this, the Bush administration has responded with timid complaints bracketed, until recently, by absurd protestations that Russia was moving, overall, in the right direction. France and Germany, dependent on Russian natural gas, have bowed even more cravenly. Against these studies in amoral pragmatism, the courage of small nations, such as Georgia, and lone heroes, such as Anna Politkovskaya, shines all the more luminously.

"Taking a risk comes with the job," she said in 2002, as she accepted an award for courage from the International Women's Media Foundation. "And if you cannot take it any more, if you are unwilling to risk, you have to leave.

"As for myself," she concluded four years ago, "I am not tired yet."