The following eye opener was on the front page of yesterday's paper edition of the Washington Post. Are we ready for a dark-skinned man born in India, raised Hindu, now a Christian, as our next president? :sneaky:
Bobby Jindal, Raised Hindu, Uses Christian Conversion to Woo GOP Base for 2016 Run
By Tom Hamburger, Published: May 12, 2014
LYNCHBURG, Va. — A dozen politically active pastors came here for a private dinner Friday night to hear a conversion story unique in the context of presidential politics: how Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal traveled from Hinduism to Protestant Christianity and, ultimately, became what he calls an "evangelical Catholic."
Over two hours, Jindal, 42, recalled talking with a girl in high school who wanted to "save my soul," reading the Bible in a closet so his parents would not see him and feeling a stir while watching a movie during his senior year that depicted Jesus on the cross.
"I was struck, and struck hard," Jindal told the pastors. "This was the Son of God, and He had died for our sins."
Jindal's session with the Christian clergy, who lead congregations in the early presidential battleground states of Iowa and South Carolina, was part of a behind-the-scenes effort by the Louisiana governor to find a political base that could help propel him into the top tier of Republican candidates seeking to run for the White House in 2016.
Known in GOP circles mostly for his mastery of policy issues such as health care, Jindal, a Rhodes Scholar and graduate of the Ivy League's Brown University, does not have an obvious pool of activist supporters to help drive excitement outside his home state. So he is harnessing his religious experience in a way that has begun to appeal to parts of the GOP's influential core of religious conservatives, many of whom have yet to find a favorite among the Republicans eyeing the presidential race.
Other potential 2016 GOP candidates are wooing the evangelical base, including Sens. Rand Paul (Ky.) and Ted Cruz (Tex.) and Indiana Gov. Mike Pence.
But over the weekend in Lynchburg — a mecca of sorts for evangelicals as the home of Liberty University, founded in the 1970s by the Rev. Jerry Falwell — Jindal appeared to make progress.
In addition to his dinner with the pastors, he delivered a well-received "call to action" address to 40,000 Christian conservatives gathered for Liberty's commencement ceremony, talking again about his faith while assailing what he said was President Obama's record of attacking religious liberty.
The pastors who came to meet Jindal said his intimate descriptions of his experiences stood out.
"He has the convictions, and he has what it takes to communicate them," said Brad Sherman of Solid Rock Christian Church in Coralville, Iowa. Sherman helped former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee in his winning 2008 campaign for delegates in Iowa.
Another Huckabee admirer, the Rev. C. Mitchell Brooks of Second Baptist Church in Belton, S.C., said Jindal's commitment to Christian values and his compelling story put him "on a par" with Huckabee, who was a Baptist preacher before entering politics.
The visiting pastors flew to Lynchburg over the weekend at the invitation of the American Renewal Project, a well-funded nonprofit group that encourages evangelical Christians to engage in the civic arena with voter guides, get-out-the-vote drives and programs to train pastors in grass-roots activism. The group's founder, David Lane, has built a pastor network in politically important states such as Iowa, Missouri, Ohio and South Carolina and has led trips to Israel with Paul and others seeking to make inroads with evangelical activists.
The group that Lane invited to Lynchburg included Donald Wildmon, a retired minister and founder of the American Family Association, a prominent evangelical activist group that has influence through its network of more than 140 Christian radio stations.
Most of the pastors that Lane's organization brought to Lynchburg had not met Jindal. But they said he captured their interest recently when he stepped forward to defend Phil Robertson, patriarch of the "Duck Dynasty" television-show family, amid a controversy over disparaging remarks he made about gays in an interview with GQ magazine.
Throughout his Lynchburg visit, Jindal presented himself as a willing culture warrior.
During his commencement address Saturday, he took up the cause of twin brothers whose HGTV reality series about renovating and reselling houses, "Flip It Forward," was canceled last week after a Web site revealed that they had protested against same-sex marriage at the 2012 Democratic National Convention in Charlotte.
The siblings, Jason and David Benham, both Liberty graduates, attended the graduation and a private lunch with Jindal, who called the action against them "another demonstration of intolerance from the entertainment industry."
"If these guys had protested at the Republican Party convention, instead of canceling their show, HGTV would probably have given them a raise," Jindal said as the Liberty crowd applauded.
He cited the Hobby Lobby craft store chain, which faced a legal challenge after refusing to provide employees with insurance coverage for contraceptives as required under the Affordable Care Act. Members of the family that owns Hobby Lobby, who have become heroes to many religious conservatives, have said that they are morally opposed to the use of certain types of birth control and that they considered the requirement a violation of their First Amendment right to religious freedom.
The family was "committed to honor the Lord by being generous employers, paying well above minimum wage and increasing salaries four years in a row even in the midst of the enduring recession," Jindal told the Liberty graduates. "None of this matters to the Obama administration."
But for the pastors who came to see Jindal in action, the governor's own story was the highlight of the weekend. And in many ways, he was unlike any other aspiring president these activists had met.
Piyush Jindal was born in 1971, four months after his parents arrived in Baton Rouge, La., from their native India. He changed his name to Bobby as a young boy, adopting the name of a character on a favorite television show, "The Brady Bunch."
His decision to become a Christian, he told the pastors, did not come in one moment of lightning epiphany. Instead, he said, it happened in phases, growing from small seeds planted over time.
Jindal recalled that his closest friend from grade school gave him a Bible with his name emblazoned in gold on the cover as a Christmas present. It struck him initially as an unimpressive gift, Jindal told the pastors.
"Who in the world would spend good money for a Bible when everyone knows you can get one free in any hotel?" he recalled thinking at the time. "And the gold lettering meant I couldn't give it away or return it."
His religious education reached a higher plane during his junior year in high school, he told his dinner audience. He wanted to ask a pretty girl on a date during a hallway conversation, and she started talking about her faith in God and her opposition to abortion. The girl invited him to visit her church.
Jindal said he was skeptical and set out to "investigate all these fanciful claims" made by the girl and other friends. He started reading the Bible in his closet at home. "I was unsure how my parents would react," he said.
After the stirring moment when he saw Christ depicted on the cross during the religious movie, the Bible and his very existence suddenly seemed clearer to him, Jindal told the pastors.
Jindal did not dwell on his subsequent conversion to Catholicism just a few years later in college, where he said he immersed himself in the traditions of the church.
He touched on it briefly during the commencement address, noting in passing that "I am best described as an evangelical Catholic." Mostly, he sought to showcase the ways in which he shares values with other Christian conservatives.
"I read the words of Jesus Christ, and I realized that they were true," Jindal told the graduates Saturday, offering a less detailed accounting of his conversion than he had done the night before with the pastors. "I used to think that I had found God, but I believe it is more accurate to say that He found me."
Alice Crites contributed to this report.
© The Washington Post Company
Bobby Jindal makes me want to vomit.
:puke:
Quote from: Locutus on May 14, 2014, 11:27:29 AM
Bobby Jindal makes me want to vomit.
:puke:
I changed my avatar just for you! :icon_twisted:
;D
In all seriousness though, Jindal is one of the biggest political hacks that there is. He will tell anyone anything just to get elected.
Quote from: Locutus on May 14, 2014, 11:27:29 AM
Bobby Jindal makes me want to vomit.
:puke:
Thank you, Locutus! Exactly the way I felt when I read that.
Quote from: libby on May 14, 2014, 01:14:41 PM
Thank you, Locutus! Exactly the way I felt when I read that.
He's got a degree in
biology from Brown University and yet he still says crap like that. People in Louisiana are stupid and he coddles that stupidity for his own political gain.
Quote from: Locutus on May 14, 2014, 11:27:29 AM
Bobby Jindal makes me want to vomit.
:puke:
I must have missed this but have to agree with you on that one!
Father of 7 children by 6 women told to get vasectomy.
The Washington Post, Commonwealth of Virginia news:
In unusual plea deal, Virginia man agrees to a vasectomy
By Justin Jouvenal June 29, 2014, at 6:49 PM
WOODSTOCK, Va. — When Jessie Lee Herald fled the scene of a crash with his injured 3-year-old son late last year, authorities reached a breaking point with a man who had been in and out of jail and fathered seven children with six women.
A Shenandoah County prosecutor proposed a plea deal that would not only send the 27-year-old to prison, but would also require him to do something to ensure he would not have another child: Get a vasectomy.
Earlier this month, Herald agreed in exchange for some charges being dropped, touching off a debate about whether the novel punishment is appropriate or has set a dubious precedent that echoes the state's dark history of forcibly sterilizing the mentally ill and mentally handicapped.
Shenandoah County Assistant Commonwealth's Attorney Ilona White said she came up with the idea after looking at Herald's criminal past.
"After reading the files and looking at the transcripts, it really did seem like it would be in the best interest of the Commonwealth," White said.
Charles Ramsey, Herald's attorney, said it was a difficult decision for his client.
"His decision to accept the unusual offer was based on his desire to get home to his family as soon as possible," Ramsey wrote in a statement. "He and I discussed several possibilities, and in the end, we felt that accepting this offer provided the most likely way to accomplish the goal."
But Steven D. Benjamin, a Richmond lawyer and former president of the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers, said prosecutors shouldn't force defendants to weigh prison against life-altering surgery. He was speaking generally, not about Herald's case in particular.
"If the state can offer leniency in exchange for the loss of bodily function, where should the line be drawn that cannot be crossed?" Benjamin wrote in an e-mail. "When does negotiating the loss of a body part become unconscionable?"
Benjamin said plea deals involving such surgery reminded him of the 1924 "Virginia Eugenical Sterilization Act," which allowed the state to sterilize more than 7,000 people in mental institutions who were deemed unfit to reproduce. The law was repealed in 1979 and victims are seeking reparations.
Herald's case, first reported by the Northern Virginia Daily, began in December, when he crashed his car on a Shenandoah County road, according to a police report. A witness said Herald got out of the car with the 3-year-old and fled in a second car.
Herald's wife told police that he brought the boy back to their Edinburg, Va., home. Officers found the child there, suffering from minor injuries and with glass in his diaper, according to the report. The boy was taken to the hospital, and Herald was later arrested.
Under the terms of his deal with prosecutors, Herald pleaded guilty to felony child endangerment, felony hit-and-run, and misdemeanor driving on a suspended license. He also agreed to undergo the vasectomy surgery within one year of getting out of prison on a four-year sentence.
He must not have the vasectomy reversed while he is on probation, and he has to pay for the operation, which could cost as much as $1,000.
In exchange for the conditions, prosecutors dropped two charges: failure to secure medical attention for a child and driving after the forfeiture of a license.
The case was just Herald's latest brush with the law. He pleaded guilty to felony hit-and-run in 2007 for crashing his car after huffing an aerosol can, according to court records. He was found guilty of unlawful wounding for beating up another man the next year and was found guilty of possessing cocaine in 2012.
Herald, who occasionally works as a roofer, disputed the notion that he is not adequately involved in his children's lives in a short statement released by his attorney.
"I think a lot of people have the wrong idea about who I am," the statement read. "I do spend time with my kids and I do support my kids."
Herald's wife, Cassandra Herald, the mother of the 3-year-old, said he is a good father and husband who agreed to the plea because he feared a long prison term.
"I don't think it's fair to the both of us because we want to have more children," she said. The other women with whom Herald has children were not listed in court papers.
Del. David B. Albo (R-Fairfax County), former head of the State Crime Commission, rejected comparing Herald's case to forced sterilization.
"He's volunteering to do it," Albo said. "I don't think [a vasectomy option] should be in the law, but if the guy wants to do it, I'm happy to let him do it. He's got a responsibility to take care of those seven kids."
A handful of prosecutors, defense lawyers and public defenders said they could not recall another case in the state in which a vasectomy had been part of a plea deal. Lawyers said there was nothing illegal about it because prosecutors and defendants have wide latitude to set the terms of a deal.
"You can make virtually anything a condition of probation as long as it doesn't offend morals," said Todd Petit, the Fairfax County public defender.
Still, Fairfax County Commonwealth's Attorney Raymond F. Morrogh said he would never consider offering a plea deal that included a vasectomy.
"I see my role as enforcing the law and protecting the people through the fair administration of justice," Morrogh wrote in an e-mail. "I leave moral bankruptcy and general lack of character to a higher authority."
Benjamin said the goal of punishment is to deter similar criminal conduct in the future, so he wondered how a plea deal involving a vasectomy would do that. After all, he said, fathering children is not illegal.
Arlington County Commonwealth's Attorney Theo Stamos said it is unwise to judge a plea deal from the outside — only prosecutors and the defendant know all the factors that were involved in the decision. Unlike Benjamin, she thought the punishment did fit the crime.
"Albeit it's very unusual, there is some connection between number of the children this man had and his ability to care for them," Stamos said. "I have a real hard time with people who have not been involved in negotiations of a case calling into question the motives of people involved in the case."
Jennifer Jenkins contributed to this report.
Anyone believe this is going to happen?