This is not a passing aberration; this turkey story. Rather this is part if a larger issue, a core theme, a central topic in the 2012 GOP political debate.
To correct the inaccuracies that Fischer is pushing - all turkeys are slaughtered the SAME. There is NO PRAYER said over them, and they are not labeled as being different, because they are NOT different from the way non-religious designated meat iss always slaughtaered - (and not just turkeys) . Any turkeys tht are subsequently labeled Halal - OR KOSHER - have the pertinent religious requirements satisfied for such labeling at the retail distribution source, where the labeling is then, appropriately, noted.
In the case of Butterball turkeys, Butterball indicates this occurs primarily in other countries to which they sell turkeys; there are more than 20 other countries to which Butterball exports this American ag product.
This Halal turkey story is NOT going away, it is not merely a minor embarassment of a lone extremist. It IS part of a larger facet of conservative politics. It is a dog whistle; it is fear mongering, a straw man bogey man of hatred. In that sense, it is no different than the straw man effigy that conservative students burned in Scotland. This is just a different Islamic strawman, thrown on a different bonfire, a U.S. conservative bonfire.
These people throw around the word Freedoms constantly. But what they want to do is to take away freedom - freedom of assembly, freedom of religion, rule of non-partisan unbiased law.
We don't need religious crazy fundamentalists in the White House. We don't need race and ethnic or religious hatred in our politics.
I found this quote from Reuters about the crosses case in question, which pertains ONLY so far as I understand this, to the installation of a religious symbol on public property. In the past there have also been controversies about putting up crosses to honor someone who was not Christian but another religion - notably Jewish, which boiled down to the issue of are crosses specifically Christian or not (it was determined they were) so a further issue here may have been the respective religions, or atheism, of the fallen officers.
I haven't gone looking for any studies yet, but I wouldn't be surprised to see a close correlation between being pro-gun, and anti-muslim/anti-sharia law, and those who are also pro-Christian dominionism/christian political evangelism. That excludes Jews, Muslims, and Mormons, and in some cases Roman Catholics. I'm not saying ALL pro-gunners are fundamentalist crazy haters and bigots, but there IS a significant overlap.
"The challenge to the Utah crosses was brought by a Texas-based group called American Atheists, which sued to remove the memorials from state property."
The sham historian David Barton has also been prominently promoted by a number of the Republican candidates, especially Michele Bachmann who has invited this pseudo-scholar to address 'classes' on the U.S. Constitution - which he is emphatically NOT qualified to do by any legitimtate standard of knowledge - specifically to promote the idea that this is an exclusively Christian nation, and that other religions should at best be tolerated, but that U.S. laws must conform to "Biblical Christianity".
