“Religion” on The Daily Caller

During the eight years I served in the Congress, including several years during which President Bill Clinton resided at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, I always enjoyed attending the National Prayer Breakfast, held around this time each year. The breakfasts were massive events with thousands of attendees, including most members of Congress, the Washington diplomatic corps, religious leaders from all faiths and all countries and the president and vice president of the United States. (more)

Here’s a headline Jay Leno would rather forget. (more)

File-sharing over the Internet was recognized by the Swedish government as an official religion on Thursday, even while the act of file-sharing remains illegal in the country. (more)

Let’s start with the premise that lawmakers are the only people in America who aren’t convinced we have too many laws. (more)

Conservatives come in all shapes, sizes and colors. We come from every education and income level. We come from every sexual orientation and every faith. With that in mind, let me introduce myself. My name is Becky. I am a conservative and a Wiccan. (more)

President Barack Obama’s Department of Justice will ask the Supreme Court this week to eliminate a long-standing legal precedent that protects religious organizations from government regulations. (more)

Be an atheist or agnostic at your own peril. (more)

For Americans, the anniversary of 9/11 brings forth different emotions. We think back on that day, recalling the trauma of that attack on our nation, reliving those feelings of helplessness, anxiety and fear. (more)

It looks like the lack of sound religion reporting is going to be a real liability this campaign season. Recent weeks have shown that writers on the left are almost wholly ignorant of religion, and writers on the right are unwilling to dismantle the toxic confusion of God and politics lest they suppress the all-important faith vote. (more)

Twenty-five presidential elections ago, a New York Times reporter wondered aloud whether a major nominating convention was a political event or “an assemblage of religious enthusiasts.” This was a fair assessment, as the delegates sang “Onward, Christian Soldiers” and “The Battle Hymn of the Republic” and closed the convention by singing “The Doxology.” (more)

I recently picked up a copy of J Street chief Jeremy Ben-Ami’s new book “A New Voice for Israel.” I flipped directly to the index in order to see what Ben-Ami had to say about my clients, Pastor John Hagee and Christians United for Israel (CUFI).  I was shocked. (more)

As a Latin Mass fan and former Catholic schoolgirl (St. Jude’s, Rockville, MD), I was an unlikely attendee at “The Response,” Texas Governor Rick Perry’s Houston prayer event. But I’m glad I went; it gave me some insights into Rick Perry’s Texas. (more)

Freedom of religion has gone to a new extreme, as Austrian authorities have decided wearing a pasta strainer on one’s head in a driver’s license photo is a state-protected form of religious expression, according to the BBC. (more)

Many of the Continental Army volunteers who were listening to the sermon in Newbury, Massachusetts’s Old South Church couldn’t help but focus on the pulpit itself. It was September 1775, and the church had recently gained fame because the bell in its clock tower was cast by Paul Revere, who had just months before made a name for himself on horseback. But some of the citizen-soldiers listening to Chaplain Samuel Spring’s challenge that day knew that they were also in the presence of another important bit of history — something they saw as very relevant to the emerging War of Independence. (more)

I saw a clip the other day of Bill Maher casually referring to Republicans as “a**holes.” That’s hardly news, and is in fact typical of the discourse-poisoning invective that caused Maher to be widely blamed by the mainstream media for the shooting of Gabrielle Giffords. (Or maybe they didn’t blame him; I forget.) But when I pondered what causes Maher to be so contemptuously dismissive of a plurality of his fellow Americans, an unlikely suspect emerged: Maher’s religious beliefs. (more)

CNN contributor LZ Granderson got it right. He’s posted an online video taking issue with the San Francisco gay activists who want government to ban circumcision for little boys. (more)

To me, the most shocking thing about the Weinergate scandal has been people’s reaction to it. The prevailing sentiment seems to be that while it was wrong for Rep. Anthony Weiner to send photos of himself to women he met on the Internet, the worst part is that he lied about it. (more)

Advocates of “public broadcasting” often point to the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) as a role model for other television networks. I wonder if it bothers them that the BBC is hysterically anti-Christian. (more)

The cult of Apple is real, according to neuroscientists. (more)

The eco website “Grist” last week showed the link between environmentalism and religion by making a “virtual confession booth” for those who have sinned against Gaia. (more)