{"id":13102,"date":"2007-10-03T16:40:38","date_gmt":"2007-10-03T20:40:38","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com\/archives\/13102.html"},"modified":"2007-10-03T16:40:38","modified_gmt":"2007-10-03T20:40:38","slug":"gop-lawmakers-balk-at-ramadan-recognition","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/gop-lawmakers-balk-at-ramadan-recognition\/","title":{"rendered":"GOP lawmakers balk at Ramadan recognition"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>One of the most common elements of a day in Congress are votes on non-binding, symbolic resolutions that honor some person or event. They&#8217;re harmless votes, which are generally ignored.<\/p>\n<p>Yesterday, however, the House took up a resolution recognizing the commencement of Ramadan and &#8220;demonstrat[ing] solidarity with and support for members of the community of Islam in the United States&#8221; during this Muslim month of fasting. The measure passed without any opposition, as these resolutions nearly always do.<\/p>\n<p>But this time, there&#8217;s a catch. 376 House members voted for it, while <a href=\"http:\/\/clerk.house.gov\/evs\/2007\/roll928.xml\">42 members<\/a> (41 Republicans and 1 Dem) voted &#8220;present.&#8221; Rep. Tom Tancredo (R-Colo.) explained why.<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>&#8220;This resolution is an example of the degree to which political correctness has captured the political and media elite in this country. I am not opposed to commending any religion for their faith. The problem is that any attempt to do so for Jews or Christians is immediately condemned as &#8216;breaching&#8217; the non-existent line between Church and State by the same elite,&#8221; Tancredo says in his statement.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Tancredo, predictably, doesn&#8217;t know what he&#8217;s talking about. First, Congress passes similar resolutions for all kinds of religious holidays, including Christmas, with nary a complaint from &#8220;elites&#8221; or anyone else. Second, unless Tancredo and his allies managed to turn the country into some kind of theocracy without anyone noticing, the line between church and state is not &#8220;non-existent.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>The ugly xenophobe&#8217;s spokesperson <a href=\"http:\/\/www.politicswest.com\/10063\/tancredo_not_bowing_ramadan_resolution\">said<\/a> he voted &#8220;present&#8221; instead of &#8220;no&#8221; because &#8220;a no vote could be construed as not commending religion in general.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>No, Tancredo is only hostile to some religions <i>in specific<\/i>. That&#8217;s much better.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>One of the most common elements of a day in Congress are votes on non-binding, symbolic resolutions that honor some person or event. They&#8217;re harmless votes, which are generally ignored. Yesterday, however, the House took up a resolution recognizing the commencement of Ramadan and &#8220;demonstrat[ing] solidarity with and support for members of the community of [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[617],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-13102","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13102","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13102"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13102\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13102"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13102"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13102"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}