Oh Me Oh My Oh
Columbus, Ohio. Nice city, actually. L. and I were there this summer. We went to German Village and the Columbus Museum of Art. We were on the phone with our friends from Columbus shortly after the 2004 election. The kind of people they were, they apologized profusely. Sweet of them.
Going into the 2006 elections, Ohio is a political quagmire where scandal abounds. Harvey Wasserman is a reporter there for the Free Press, an alt.weekly still burning bright with the old fire. And he has Massachusetts ties. Wasserman was a resident of the Montague Farm back in its anti-nuke glory days. I'm on his mailing list, so I get regular updates from his Ohio reporting.
This week's story especially caught my eye. Called "Are mainstream churches finally standing up to the GOP’s hateful 'Christian' blitzkrieg?", the piece, co-authored by Wasserman and Bob Fitrakis, praises the UCC for standing up to the Christian Right. If you can read past the "Christo-fascist" labeling, you'll get to what is really the meat of the story:In Ohio, the battle has actually hit the courts. More than fifty Columbus-area clergy have signed formal complaints with the Internal Revenue Service demanding an investigation of the practices of two extremist churches in regards to their tax exempt status. The two documents charge that the World Harvest Church and Fairfield Christian Church have functioned as de facto campaign organizations for the gubernatorial campaign of J. Kenneth Blackwell, Ohio’s GOP Secretary of State. Blackwell served as co-chair of Ohio 2004’s Bush-Cheney campaign while simultaneously managing the vote count.
Sniff, sniff. Yup, something does stink.
Going into the 2006 elections, Ohio is a political quagmire where scandal abounds. Harvey Wasserman is a reporter there for the Free Press, an alt.weekly still burning bright with the old fire. And he has Massachusetts ties. Wasserman was a resident of the Montague Farm back in its anti-nuke glory days. I'm on his mailing list, so I get regular updates from his Ohio reporting.
This week's story especially caught my eye. Called "Are mainstream churches finally standing up to the GOP’s hateful 'Christian' blitzkrieg?", the piece, co-authored by Wasserman and Bob Fitrakis, praises the UCC for standing up to the Christian Right. If you can read past the "Christo-fascist" labeling, you'll get to what is really the meat of the story:In Ohio, the battle has actually hit the courts. More than fifty Columbus-area clergy have signed formal complaints with the Internal Revenue Service demanding an investigation of the practices of two extremist churches in regards to their tax exempt status. The two documents charge that the World Harvest Church and Fairfield Christian Church have functioned as de facto campaign organizations for the gubernatorial campaign of J. Kenneth Blackwell, Ohio’s GOP Secretary of State. Blackwell served as co-chair of Ohio 2004’s Bush-Cheney campaign while simultaneously managing the vote count.
Sniff, sniff. Yup, something does stink.