Posted: January 28, 2012 at 11:05 pm

Tea Party Congressman to Hold Hearing on the Fate of Jesus

Who says Congress doesn’t work on issues that matter to Americans during tough economic times?

Montana congressman Denny Rehberg, co-founder of the Congressional Tea Party Caucus and Michelle Bachmann’s earliest endorser, has announced that he will hold a hearing this week on a crucial issue: a statue of Jesus at a ski resort.

For the last several months, Rehberg has been all Jesus all the time, obsessed with a small ceramic statue of Christ that sits on the edge of a ski run at Big Mountain Ski Resort in Whitefish, Montana.

There’s been a slew of press releases and a blitz of national TV appearances on shows like “Fox and Friends.” He put up a Save the Jesus Statue website (constructed with his congressional office funds) and went on a whirlwind Save Jesus tour around Montana, with e-mail action alerts, a “draft legislative solution,” and robo-calls to thousands of Montana voters, telling them that he is working hard to save Jesus and urging them to support him in this important work. He spent Veterans Day meeting with veterans to tell them that their support for him (Rehberg) in this important cause is crucial.

And now, the grand finale in Rehberg’s heroic effort to prove that he is pro-Jesus: a hearing about the statue, before a Congressional committee, this friday.

The small statue was erected in the 1950s on a piece of National Forest land that abuts the ski area, and the permit has now come up for renewal after six decades. The Forest Service was notified by an “anti-establishment” group from Wisconsin that if it renewed the permit, it would be in violation of the establishment clause. The Forest Service has thus considered options, one of which is to simply ignore the Wisconsin group’s threats. Another option is (gasp) to move the statue a few feet onto private land. That’s an outrage, says Rehberg.

Rehberg is five points down in his race against Jon Tester for the US Senate, so obviously he believes that a boost in his pro-Jesus street cred is needed to consolidate the evangelical vote.

Also, Tester’s star is very high among veterans, and has been so ever since he took office in 2007 and immediately made vets a centerpiece of his domestic policy. Of course, Tester focuses not on statues, but on services–health care for veterans, jobs for veterans, loans for veterans, things that matter. Veterans like Tester, a lot. But Montana Republicans (who after two decades of dominance have been virtually eradicated as statewide officeholders, thanks to Schweitzer, Tester and a resurgent Democratic party) believe that the veteran vote is a GOP birthright that can never be taken from them.

Tester also believes the statue should remain unmolested. But after making his opinion known, he moved on to doing real work on things that matter, because he understands (unlike Rehberg who is a man-child) that if you are in Congress, you should be acting like an adult.

And guess who is coming to the Big Mountain area in a few weeks? You guessed it. Tim Tebow will be in nearby Kalispell, Montana, to talk at a fundraiser for a Christian School. Tebow is sure to weigh in on the Big Mountain Jesus issue.

After all, what could be more important?

Posted: July 22, 2010 at 7:36 am

Failed abortion banners stretch to find silver lining, excuses

Annie Bukacek and Montana’s most extreme anti-choicers are trying to find the silver lining in their second signature-gathering-based failure (and umpteenth legislative referenda-based failure in 20-years) to get a total abortion ban on Montana’s ballot.

“These are all volunteer signatures, which is an amazing feat in and of itself.”

Given the tea party, mega churches, and the general propensity of Montanans to be willing to put questions to a vote of the people, I don’t think it took that many volunteers. Nor do I think that it is “an amazing feat” that you convinced some people to sign your petition voluntarily. The fact that these right-wingers think so, however, certainly doesn’t say much about what they were trying to get on the ballot.

Perhaps some will say that I misconstrue the above quotation–that this individual is trying to say that the signatures were collected by volunteers; however, I don’t think that’s the case because the press release makes the point elsewhere, and, it is their press release.

Victory for Montanans (Jay wrote about it earlier and I touched on it briefly below), the integrity of the MT Constitution, and the right to privacy can be found in the failure of CI-102 to qualify for the ballot in November, so the rest of us will also be celebrating.

This is not the first time Bukacek has faced failure, so it’s good to see she’s keeping a positive attitude about it all:

She has written a book about weight loss, and her diabetes quality assurance efforts launched a program that is being used nation-wide. Because of her quality assurance work, she was chosen by the American Board of Internal Medicine as one of six physician consultants regarding its Diabetes Practice Improvement Model. Asked to leave a physician group practice because she refused to stop praying with patients, she started her own clinic that is flourishing.

Well, it was flourishing until she came under investigation for Medicaid fraud. Now, the clinic website, Hosanna Health Care, appears to be down too.

They group is not beyond looking for excuses either. In the same press release, Cal Zastrow, co-founder the national group that is pushing this nonsense on states, seems to be postulating that perhaps one reason for CI-102′s failure to qualify is that one of the movement’s key players was too busy elsewhere to make it happen here in Montana:

“Jesus Christ is building a movement for personhood rights of babies across the country,” explained Cal Zastrow, co-founder of Personhood USA. “He will continue to build in Montana, and they will stand ready.”

Sounds like that guy is pretty busy, plus he’s got the Derek Skees legislative race up in the Flathead and Michael Steele to worry about.