• George Bush: He "served" in the National Guard, except for that period when he disappeared to work on a campaign...didn’t see an action. At least not in Vietnam.
• Dick Cheney:  Had "other priorities"
• Newt Gingrich:  Now says he supports what we did in Vietnam, but never wore a uniform
• Rush Limbaugh: anal cyst
• Ken Starr: psoriasis
• Jack Kemp: "bad knee" (it didn’t keep him from playing pro ball, did it now?)
• Gary Bauer:  had a “vague physical problem” that got him a 1-Y draft classification
• Saxby Chambliss: "bad knees"
• Pat Buchanan: "bad knees"
• Tom DeLay:  said he wanted to serve in Vietnam, but was unable to since all the positions had been taken by Blacks and Hispanics.
• Denny Hastert:  Again with the "bad knees", but he managed to make the wrestling team in college.
• Trent Lott:  was needed stateside to fulfill vital cheerleading duties
• Ted Nugent:  He claims that 30 days before his draft board physical, he stopped all forms of personal hygiene. The last 10 days, he ingested nothing but Vienna sausages and Pepsi; and a week before his physical, he stopped using bathrooms altogether, virtually living inside pants caked with his own excrement, stained by his urine. That spectacle won Nugent a deferment, he says. "... but if I would have gone over there, I’d have been killed, or I’d have killed, or I’d killed all the hippies in the foxholes...I would have killed everybody." (Detroit Free Press Magazine, July 15 1990)

By CHUCK OXLEY

THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

BOISE, Idaho -- A Kansas preacher and gay rights foe whose congregation is protesting military funerals around the country said he’s coming to Idaho tomorrow to picket the memorial for an Idaho National Guard soldier killed in Iraq.

A flier on the Web site of Pastor Fred Phelps’ Westboro Baptist Church claims God killed Cpl. Carrie French with an improvised explosive device in retaliation against the United States for a bombing at Phelps’ church six years ago.

"We’re coming," Phelps said yesterday.

Westboro Baptist either has protested or is planning protests of other public funerals of soldiers from Michigan, Alabama, Minnesota, Virginia and Colorado. A protest is planned for July 11 at Dover Air Force Base, the military base where war dead are transported before being sent on to their home states.

Phelps gained national notoriety in 1998 when he picketed the funeral of Matthew Shepard, the gay college student beaten to death in Wyoming.

Since then, Phelps said his church has been the target of hateful words and actions, including a bomb attack six years ago.

Phelps’ church has picketed the funerals of AIDS victims for more than a decade.

French, 19, was a Caldwell High School graduate and varsity cheerleader. She was killed June 5 in the northern city of Kirkuk. French served as an ammunition specialist with the 116th Brigade Combat Team’s 145th Support Battalion.

Phelps said the fact that French led an all-American life gives him all the more reason to picket her final public tribute.

"An all-American girl from a society of all-American heretics," he said.

"Our attitude toward what’s happening with the war is the Lord is punishing this evil nation for abandoning all moral imperatives that are worth a dime," Phelps said.

Caldwell Police Chief Bob Sobba said he cannot bar Phelps from going to the public funeral, which is scheduled for 1 p.m. at the Albertson College of Idaho in that city.

"While we respect Mr. Phelps’ right to protest, we would hope that he would respect the family and friends of this young person by not disrupting the memorial," Sobba said.

Idaho Air National Guard Lt. Tony Vincelli, acting as spokesman for French’s family, said there were no plans to change the funeral arrangements.

The Rev. Brian Fischer, pastor of Boise’s Community Church of the Valley, and himself a past target of protest by the Westboro Baptist Church, decried Phelps’ plan.

"What Phelps is doing is a reprehensible thing, to take a funeral and turn it into a photo op for his hate cause," Fischer said.

"We hope everyone will ignore Phelps’ group."

In 2003, Phelps demanded that he be allowed to erect an anti-gay monument in a Boise public park. To avoid a lawsuit from his group, city officials voted in 2004 that a Ten Commandments monument be moved out of the park.

Here’s more on this evil, reprehensible man’s life:

•  Phelps left Mississippi for Bob Jones University. While there, he was part of a failed mission to convert Mormons in the town of Vernal, Utah. It was one of the earliest examples of Fred’s newfound personality: When one of the missionaries choked during a question and answer session, Phelps responded by attacking the person who’d asked the question, sparking a near riot. While in Vernal, Phelps was ordained a minister by the local Baptist Church; he returned to Bob Jones, only to mysteriously drop out. Years later, he cited an opposition to the school’s racial practices (blacks were not allowed to attend until the 1990s); in 1994, a former employee of the university told the Topeka Capital Journal that the school staff actually feared Phelps, and he was given an ultimatum to either seek psychiatric counselling or be expelled (EDITOR’S NOTE: That’s a first for me.  Too crazy for Bob Jones University?  Ouch).
•  Fred’s position at Eastside was short lived; as some congregants would recall years later, he was a "reverend from Hell," encouraging his congregants to beat their wives and children; he was once forced to bail one of his parishoners out of jail after counselling the man to punch his wife in the face until she became "subjugated." Parishoners of Eastside recall one of Phelps’ sermons in particular: A good left hook makes for a right fine wife. Brethren, they can lock us up, but we’ll still do what the Bible tells us to do. Either our wives are going to obey, or we’re going to beat them! Most congregants recall an incident one Sunday morning when Phelps’ infant son, Mark, began to cry during his sermon; Phelps responded by walking down from the pulpit, punching the baby in the face, and then returning to continue the sermon, to the horror of his congregants. Phelps dismissal from the church came when a female congregant admitted that she had committed adultery. The next Sunday, Phelps’ sermon revolved around the woman, repeatedly referring to her as a whore and encouraging the congregation to draw up an official "form" declaring her to be damned to Hell and excommunicated from the church. In response, the congregants voted to kick Phelps out of the church.
•  In 1997, before the fall of Saddam Hussein during the second Gulf War, Phelps wrote him a letter praising his regime, and received special permission from the Iraqi government to send a group of his children to Baghdad to protest against the American government. Hussein granted permission, and a group of WBC congregants traveled to Iraq to protest against the U.S. The parishoners stood on the streets of Baghdad and in heavily patronized Baghdad establishments holding signs reading:

  • GO HOME (with a cartoon of Bill Clinton)
  • BABY KILLER (with a cartoon of Hillary Clinton)
  • BABY KILLER (with a cartoon of Bill Clinton)
  • FAG GORE
  • FAG USA= SODOM
  • STOP THE HOLOCAUST (in reference to Phelps’ "Topeka Baptist Holocaust" campaign)
  • FAG USA (with a picture of an inverted, burning American flag)
  • USA SIN (with a picture of anatomically incorrect stick figures engaged in anal sex)

  Phelps mourned the fall of Hussein’s regime and has consistently criticized the invasion of Iraq, citing, "IRAQ=USA=SODOM" and keeping a toll on his webpage celebrating the death of every American soldier killed and pronouncing loyalty to Iraq. Phelps has also repeatedly championed Fidel Castro for Castro’s stance against homosexuality; in 1998 Harper’s magazine published a letter Phelps sent to Castro in which he praised Castro and lambasted the US. In 2004, when a pro-homosexual Cuban refugee announced plans to travel to Cuba, Phelps sent another letter to Castro "warning" him of the man’s plans and requesting travel visas for a group of WBC congregants so that they could follow the refugee around Havana with signs bearing anti-US and anti-homosexual slogans.
• Though the children that remain loyal to him claim that they were only spanked as children, there is an abundance of evidence to support the claims of two of his daughters and two of his sons that Phelps was physically abusive to his children and wife. Phelps’ sons Nate and Mark, who claim that they were among the most abused, each suffer permanent debilitating injuries consistent with their stories of Phelps beating them with a mattock handle. According to the boys, he woke them one Christmas Eve in the 1970s while under the influence, bent them over a bathtub, and struck them nearly 300 times with the mattock handle.

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Some medical professionals questioned the appropriateness of Frist challenging court-approved doctors who have treated Schiavo. Laurie Zoloth, director of bioethics for the Center for Genetic Medicine at Northwestern University, said she was surprised to hear Frist weigh in, given that he has not examined Schiavo. "It is extremely unusual -- and by a non-neurologist, I might add," Zoloth said in an interview.

Were Frist rendering an official medical judgment, she said, relying on an "amateur video" could raise liability issues. After 15 years, "there should be no confusion about the medical data, and that’s what was so surprising to me about Dr. Frist disagreeing about her medical status," Zoloth said.

It is not the first time that Frist has created a stir in medical and political circles. In December, on ABC’s "This Week With George Stephanopoulos," he repeatedly declined to say whether he thought HIV-AIDS could be transmitted through tears or sweat. A much-disputed federal education program championed by some conservative groups had suggested that such transmissions occur.

After numerous challenges by Stephanopoulos, Frist said that "it would be very hard" for someone to contract AIDS via tears or sweat. The Web site of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says: "Contact with saliva, tears, or sweat has never been shown to result in transmission of HIV."

Frist’s aides say political considerations played no role in his actions regarding Schiavo. "His interest in this was sparked solely as a medical and human rights matter," said Eric M. Ueland, his chief of staff. "It’s time for people to take off the 2008 rose-colored glasses and see Bill Frist for who he really is."

Ah, but the Family Resource Council keeps hope alive:

Schiavo Update: Conclusively Inconclusive

 

Yesterday an autopsy report was released on Terri Schiavo, the young Florida woman whose court-ordered death caused controversy across the nation and in the halls of Congress. The report found no evidence of physical abuse or strangulation but noted that the cause of Terri’s brain injury was inconclusive due to the length of time (fifteen years) from injury to her death. The examiner did conclude that Terri did not suffer from bulimia. It was bulimia that her estranged husband, Michael Schiavo, insisted was the cause of her brain damage while the autopsy documents the fact that Terri was severely disabled, it also showed that deliberate dehydration, not disability, killed her. In short, Terri Schiavo would be alive today if a Florida judge had not ordered her execution. All innocent life should be protected, society failed Terri Schiavo and her parents, steps should be taken that this does not happen again.

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-- Kim

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