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News Archive

January 2001

Bush imposes his religious agenda:

• Cut funding for international family-planning organizations
• Give taxpayers' dollars to religious organizations
• School vouchers

A series of articles, appearing on CNN.

• Key Democrats challenge Bush's education plan, 2001-01-03
  Key Democrats in the House of Representatives will unveil their own education reform package Wednesday, increasing pressure on President George W. Bush to abandon contentious plans for private school vouchers... they said vouchers...would siphon off funds from cash-strapped public schools.
• Bush rallies support for 'faith-based' services package —  2001-01-30
  President Bush took his push for allowing religious groups to receive public funds for social service efforts to a Washington school Tuesday as aides prepared to formally submit the proposal to Congress...
  Tuesday's event at The Fishing School, a religious community center in Washington, is the latest in a series of meetings Bush has planned throughout the week with leaders of spiritual and charitable groups to secure support for the proposal. The plan marks a strategic shift for the U.S. government, making private and "faith-based" charities the administration's first line of defense against social problems such as poverty, addiction and homelessness.
• EU looks to fill abortion funding gap —  2001-01-29
  The European Union may provide funding for family planning programmes which the new U.S. administration has banned.
• Bush signs order opening "faith-based" charity office —  2001-01-29
  The new president announced Monday the creation of a new White House office focused solely on helping religious or "faith-based" groups obtain federal tax dollars.
• EU chief attacks Bush on abortion cash —  2001-01-23
  Plans by new U.S. President George W. Bush to ban funding for international family planning groups that support abortion have been criticised by a European Union chief.
  After Bush reinstated the policy in one of the first acts of his presidency, Anna Diamantopoulou, EU Commissioner for Employment and Social Affairs, said she was disappointed by the move and feared it "may be a signal of things to come."
• Groups see fight with Bush over abortion rights, 2001-01-23
  Women's rights groups and their allies in Congress said Tuesday they were bracing for an all-out assault by President Bush on abortion rights
• Bush to block funds for international groups that offer abortions, 2001-01-22
• Bush reinstates ban on international family planning funds, New administration changes balance of power on abortion issue —  2001-01-22

Madalyn Murray O'Hair Disappearance Case —  Rationalist International Bulletin #63

Rationalist International, 2001-01-30

On 28 January, searchers of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) unearthed a shallow grave...in south-west Texas. They found remains of three humans, believed to be Dr. Madalyn Murray O'Hair, her son Jon Garth Murray and her adopted granddaughter Robin Murray O'Hair. The famous atheist leader and her children had disappeared in late 1995 under mysterious circumstances.
Dr. Madalyn Murray O'Hair was founder-president of American Atheists. Her major achievement was the Supreme Court ban on prayer and Bible reading in public schools of the USA in 1963. On 27 August 1995, she and her children left abruptly their home and their offices in the head quarters of American Atheists in Austin, Texas. They were never seen again by their friends and colleagues.
Her numerous open and clandestine enemies and enviers joined in a smear campaign against her and colored the victim as villain. They alleged that she had stage-managed the abduction in order to steal money from the organization. It was, in fact, her life-time work to build up American Atheists as one of the largest and most active atheist organizations in the world...

See also:

• More Evidence Found at Grave Site: Likely O'Hair Bodies —  (American Atheists web site)

Britain: Opening the gate for a new era of medicine —  Rationalist International Bulletin #62

Rationalist International, 2001-01-28

Britain...has become the first country to allow human embryo cloning for research and therapeutic purposes... The new law, which will soon be in effect, allows scientists to clone human embryos up to 14 days old. Cloning after this period as well as cloning for other than research and therapeutic purposes (for example for reproduction) remains banned...
The whole spectrum of religious leaders from the Anglican church to British Catholics, Jews and Muslims stood hand in hand against the legislation...
Research on embryo stem cells could revolutionize medicine. Stem cells are master cells with the potential to become -- and substitute -- any type of human cells. Geneticists will be able to grow tissue for any part of the body, which needs repair. Organ transplant operations will become unnecessary...

Confessions of a Lonely Atheist
Natalie ANGIER

New York Times Magazine —  (Sundays), 2001-01-14

...nothing seems as despised, illicit and un-American as atheism. Again and again the polls proclaim the United States to be a profoundly and persistently religious nation. ...while a mere 3.2 percent of Americans will agree flatly that they 'don't believe in God,' 17.2 percent of the Dutch concur with that statement, as do 19.1 of those in France, 16.8 percent of Swedes, 20.3 percent of people in the Czech Republic, 19.7 percent of Russians, 10.6 percent of Japanese and 9.2 percent of Canadians...
So who in her right mind would want to be an atheist in America today, a place where presidential candidates compete for the honor of divining 'what Jesus would do,' and where Senator Joseph Lieberman can declare that we shouldn't deceive ourselves into thinking that our constitutional 'freedom of religion' means 'freedom from religion,' or 'indulge the supposition that morality can be maintained without religion,' and for his atheism-baiting receive the lightest possible slap on the wrist from his more secularized Jewish counterparts?... So, I'll out myself. I'm an Atheist. I don't believe in God, Gods, Godlets or any sort of higher power beyond the universe itself...
...the canard that godliness and goodliness are linked in any way but typographically must be taken on faith, for no evidence supports it.