The stubborn myth of the Christian country: Why the U.S. has always been “one nation, under gods”

A historian challenges conservative claims that the U.S. has a single religious heritage

LAURA MILLER 

Alexander Hamilton, George Washington, Thomas Jefferson (Credit: Wikimedia)

As Peter Manseau, author of “One Nation, Under Gods: A New American History,” would have it, nothing has done more damage to the ideal of American religious pluralism than the “stubborn persistence of words spoken more than a century before the United States was a nation at all.” Those words are “a city upon a hill,” preached by the Puritan John Winthrop to his fellow colonists as they prepared to leave their ship at Massachusetts Bay in 1630. Most strenuously invoked by Ronald Reagan, the city on the hill, according to Manseau, has for the past 50 years “dominated presidential rhetoric about the nation’s self-understanding, causing an image borrowed from the Gospels to become a tenet of faith in America’s civil religion.”

The incessant citation of Winthrop’s metaphor — which envisioned the fledgling colony as a shining example set up to inspire the world but also to invite its comprehensive moral scrutiny — keeps reinforcing the assumption that the United States is fundamentally Christian. There’s more behind that stubborn belief than just rhetoric, of course, but when even ostensibly pluralistic presidents like John F. Kennedy and Barack Obama conjure up Winthrop’s biblical metaphor, it starts to take on the aura of an unquestioned truth.

Well, Manseau certainly questions it with “One Nation, Under Gods,” an unusual work of history meant to revive the idea that the U.S. is a “land shaped and informed by internal religious diversity — some of it obvious, some of it hidden.” Most key points in our national narrative involve a non-Christian element if you look closely, he maintains. “One Nation, Under Gods” is less a continuous narrative itself than a series of isolated snapshots, each chapter telling the story of a person considered a heretic, blasphemer, atheist or heathen, who nevertheless helped in some way to shape the course of American history.

A few of Manseau’s examples are familiar, particularly Thomas Jefferson, the founding father often branded an atheist in his own time and whose Deism today’s Christian conservatives strategically overlook. In a deft move, Manseau captures Jefferson’s heterodox status by relating how, as an old man, the third president offered to sell 6,000 volumes from his own personal library to the nation. (These books remain the core collection of the Library of Congress.) It was a controversial proposal, as some critics complained that Jefferson’s library “abounded with productions of atheistical, irreligious and immoral character,” and some were even “in the original French”! In examining Jefferson’s own cataloging system, Manseau finds evidence of the Sage of Monticello’s conviction that “religious systems inevitably and necessarily interact with each other in ways at once contentious, intimate and transformative.”

Some of the stories in “One Nation, Under Gods” are more surprising. “It is perhaps the greatest of forgotten influences on American life and culture,” Manseau writes, that some 20 percent or more of Africans living in America around the time of the Revolutionary War were Muslims, a quantity that “dwarfed the number of Roman Catholics or Jews.” The majority of enslaved Africans did practice such Western African religions as Yoruba and Obeah, all of which contributed to the distinctive customs of African-American Christianity. But we also have a handful of stories of African Muslims abducted to the U.S., where, as in the case of one Omar ibn Said, they astonished the natives by writing fluently in a strange alphabet (Arabic) and impressed, if also bewildered, everyone with their abstemious piety.

Tituba, a slave, was the first person accused in the Salem Witch Trials, and although often depicted as African, she was most likely an “Indian” from South America, by way of Barbados. She had made a “witch cake” (a nasty concoction of rye flour and urine) for divinatory purposes, and in doing so was probably tapping into multiple folk traditions, including those of the colonists’ own native England. Manseau believes such practices, though forbidden, were anything but rare in the colonies and should be thought of as “a kind of spiritual equalizer, providing religious authority outside social structures that were inevitably defined at times by class and gender.” Tituba herself quickly figured out that the best course of action when called up before the court was to “confess” every lurid detail the magistrates wanted to hear, including the visits she received from the devil, his commands that she serve him, and the culpability of her two co-defendants (unpopular village women) in casting spells on children. As a result, Tituba was the only one of the three to escape execution. Long before the advent of modern-day spin doctors, she grasped the advantage of getting ahead of the story.

Then there is the network of Jewish merchants extending from Pennsylvania to Amsterdam by way of the island of St. Eustatius, in the Caribbean, a major conduit of supplies and funds through the British blockade during the Revolutionary War. One Polish Jew, Haym Solomon, gave so much money to the cause of independence that he died penniless. He and his co-religionists, driven from one European nation to another in a roundelay of persecution, hoped and believed they could finally find refuge in the fledgling nation.

It was Ralph Waldo Emerson’s brilliant, irascible Aunt Mary, a “prototypical American eccentric,” who first introduced her nephew and intellectual protégé to the concepts and iconography of Hindu mythology after she met “a Visitor here from India” in 1822. Their correspondence on these and other spiritual matters would inform Transcendentalism and in turn the Eastern-infused philosophies of generations to come. (Manseau provides a survey of Hindu beliefs and stories cropping up in the work of Thoreau and even Melville, as well as a persistent interest in Indian religion on the part of American feminists like Elizabeth Palmer Peabody and Margaret Fuller.)

But perhaps the most fascinating chapter in “One Nation, Under Gods” explores recent theories about the influence of a syncretic Native American revival movement on Joseph Smith and his Book of Mormon. The young half-brother of a Seneca chief, Handsome Lake, was an aging, ne’er-do-well hunter who experienced a revelation during a near-fatal illness. What was revealed to him fused Iroquois mythology with Quaker-like morality into a reimagined creation story explaining how the Iroquois had fallen so low in their own land. Handsome Lake died when Smith was 10, but a Mormon scholar has pointed out that only weeks before Smith’s own visions commenced, Handsome Lake’s nephew spoke at a public gathering in Smith’s town of Palmyra, New York.

The Code of Handsome Lake, like the Mormon story of the Native Americans as a lost tribe of Israel, is “a tale of white and Indian unity interrupted by evils brought across the sea.” Both creeds stressed sobriety and involved the manifestation of three angelic presences charged with guiding the inhabitants of the New World to a better future. Both were born during a period of intense, innovative religious activity known as the Second Great Awakening and arose in a region of Western New York state dubbed “the Burned-Over District” for the fervor that seemed to consume everyone in the vicinity. Shakers, utopian communities, millenarians and spiritualists were just some of the unorthodox and fractious believers who flourished there.

But even the idea that Winthrop’s little community represented a unified city on a hill is an illusion, as the Puritan dissidents Roger Williams and Anne Hutchinson could testify. The Pilgrims might have all called themselves Christians, but some differences among them were seen by their theocratic leaders as profound threats to the spiritual survival of the community. Both Williams and Hutchinson were cast out and created communities of their own. There was literally never a point in the history of the colonies or the U.S. when all or most Americans genuinely shared the same faith. “The true gospel of the American experience,” Manseau writes, “is not religious agreement but dissent.”

Laura Miller is a senior writer for Salon. She is the author of "The Magician's Book: A Skeptic's Adventures in Narnia" and has a Web site,magiciansbook.com.

How God Judges a Nation

Immigration and the Health of a Nation

March 5, 2015 by Tim Suttle

Read more: http://www.patheos.com/blogs/paperbacktheology/2015/03/immigration-and-the-health-of-a-nation.html#ixzz3Td2kX0ZD

I was reading some Eugene Peterson this week, and ran upon a section in which he talked about how we assess the health of a nation. He said, “We measure the health of our nation and the success of our lives in terms of per capita income and gross national product.” (Working the Angles) The book was written 25 years ago, and nothing has changed. Add the Consumer Price Index, Dow Industrial Average, S&P 500, Consumer Confidence, Employment statistics, and you are hitting most of the levers for the average person.

Christians (especially my tribe, the evangelicals), love to whip out metrics involving certain moral issues like abortion, gay marriage, the right to bear arms, and low taxes. They say that’s how we should assess the health of a nation.

According to the scriptures, however, one of the primary metrics God uses to assess the health of a nation is hospitality. How do you treat the least of these? The scriptures are replete with commands to love enemies, care for strangers, and welcome aliens. My favorite is Leviticus 19:33-34, “When a foreigner resides among you in your land, do not mistreat them. The foreigner residing among you must be treated as your native-born. Love them as yourself, for you were foreigners in Egypt.”

When God judges a nation or people harshly, more often than not, it is not because of their moral failures—sex, drugs, and rock and roll—but their failure to be hospitable to the vulnerable. “Now this was the sin of your sister Sodom,” the prophet Ezekiel says, “She and her daughters were arrogant, overfed and unconcerned; they did not help the poor and needy.”

Which brings me to immigration. In Kansas, where I live, Governor Sam Brownback and Secretary of State Kris Kobach are both outspoken Christians. Both of them love to be seen in public acting in patriotic ways. Their rhetoric is sentimental if not idolatrous in terms of their regard for the nation, democracy, states rights, and the state of Kansas. They claim to do everything they do for the good of the nation or state. Yet they do everything within their power (in Kobach’s case arguably exceeding his power) to hurt the immigrant. One Kobach quote puts a fine point on it: “If you really want to create a job tomorrow, you can remove an illegal alien today.”

I can only imagine God’s disgust when he sees Brownback and Kobach sing “God Bless America” then turn around and treat the immigrant as a scapegoat, attacking the least of these with brazen callousness.

You want to know whether the arrow is pointing up or down for our society? Here’s your leading indicator: How do we treat the poor? The immigrant (legal or not)? Do we elect leaders who will do anything to increase our consumeristic zeal and lust for cash? Or do we elect leaders with the vision to help us become less focused on wealth production and consumption, and more focused on the flourishing of the most vulnerable among us.

With all due respect, Governor Brownback and Secretary Kobach no doubt believe they are leading their state in the right direction. But they seem to be blinded to the ways in which their political ideology and fears have usurped their commitment to Christ. They are tanking the health of the State of Kansas, and they are marching lock step with those who are doing their best to tank our entire society. They are on the wrong side of immigration.

How do we know this? We look the other side—the side they are trying their best to crush & defeat—and if that’s where the scriptures stand, if that’s where Jesus stands, and if that’s where faithfulness stands, if that’s where ‘the least of these’ stand, then one must be on the wrong side. One can cite economic statistics all you want, and the scriptures will simply reply, “What does the Lord require of you, but to do justice, love mercy, and walk humbly with your God.”

Read more: http://www.patheos.com/blogs/paperbacktheology/2015/03/immigration-and-the-health-of-a-nation.html#ixzz3Td2YnROP

'Netanyahu has caused Israel more strategic damage than Iran'

'Netanyahu has caused Israel the most strategic damage on Iran'

In exclusive interview, ex-Mossad chief Meir Dagan says he agrees with prime minister on threat posed by nuclear Iran, but warns Netanyahu 'is single-handedly motivating the Americans into rushing to reach an agreement.'

Nahum Barnea and Shimon Shiffer

Published:  02.27.15, 23:47 / Israel News

Meir Dagan feels a debt of gratitude towards Benjamin Netanyahu. "When I got sick," Dagan told us on Wednesday, "I needed a liver for a transplant. Netanyahu stepped in to help me. I have no personal grudge against him; to the contrary."


Nevertheless, Dagan did have some harsh things to say on the eve of Netanyahu's trip to Washington. A man of vast experience and much influence, Dagan, who served as head of the Mossad under Ariel Sharon, Ehud Olmert and Netanyahu, is a concerned Israeli. "I turned 70 last week," he said to us. "All my children live in Israel. My grandchildren live in Israel. I want the dynasty to continue."

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Dagan isn't exactly a leftist; anyone familiar with his biography will testify to this. When it comes to Iran, he shares Netanyahu's concerns. "A nuclear Iran is a reality that Israel won't be able to come to terms with," he said.

But Dagan believes that Netanyahu, because of the way he is handling the issue, is only bringing us closer to this harsh reality. "The person that has caused Israel the most strategic damage when it comes to the Iranian issue is the prime minister," he told us.

Former head of Mossad Meir Dagan (Photo: Bar-el Efraim)

Iran's nuclear program, we said, started before Netanyahu's terms in office.

"We saw the first signs of Iran's aspirations to obtain nuclear weapons in 1988," Dagan said. "But we began to grasp the enormity of the challenge only in 2002-2003, during Sharon's term in office. Discussions were held. The professional bodies in the defense establishment told Sharon that the problem wasn't only an Israeli one, but a global one. They told Sharon that Israel should keep a low profile, and Sharon accepted that advice. A similar discussion was held with Olmert, and the policy was reaffirmed.

"Some 65 percent of the world's oil reserves are in Iran and the countries surrounding it. So, it's a global problem. As for Israel, it enters the fray from a tricky place. Until now, Israel has never signed any international convention concerning nuclear weapons. Israel refuses to lay itself open to international supervision. It would best, therefore, for Israel not to place itself at the forefront. We'll support any effort, intelligence or political, but we will always be on the sidelines."

"We didn't sit around and do nothing. The initial sanctions were imposed on Iran in 2003, thanks to our influence."

There were also clandestine operations, we said.

"There were," he said. "We always said that the Iranian nuclear program could be delayed but that it was impossible to destroy it by means of clandestine operations. When I came to the end of my tenure as Mossad chief, in 2011, I said that Iran would not have nuclear weapons before 2015. I don't like to say so, but I was right.

"We had time: Some of it was used wisely, some of it wasn't. We managed to secure the cooperation of numerous countries in the campaign against Iran's nuclear program. We had some significant successes, beginning with Belgium and Germany and through to countries in the Far East. We persuaded states to stop selling items that the Iranians needed for the project – items that have a dual purpose. I'm talking about a huge number – something like 20,000 items. We managed to push through United Nations resolutions against Iran; we promoted intensification of the sanctions; we held very close talks with the Americans.

"We achieved an environment in which the international community was afraid to do business with Iran. Corporations stayed away from Iran because they were afraid of ramifications elsewhere – in other words, of losing money. The legal status wasn't the only determining factor; facts on the ground played a part as well. Corporations realized that they would pay a heavy price for violating the sanctions.

"But Netanyahu wanted to go one step further. He turned the Iranian problem into Israel's problem. Countries that had taken measures against Iran responded to his speeches by absolving themselves of responsibility. If Iran reaches the moment of truth, Israel will deal with it."

Why did Netanyahu forgo the military option, we asked.

"All the professional bodies were opposed to it," Dagan said. "Netanyahu would have had to take full responsibility for such a decision. He didn't want to take that responsibility."

"We were opposed to the military option, but it never occurred to us to rebel against him. None of us doubted that the prime minister had the authority to take such a decision. We voiced our professional opinions, and that's it. He didn't want to take such a dramatic decision without the backing of the heads of the defense establishment because he knew he would bear the responsibility in the end. I have never seen him take responsibility for anything.

"I've seen other leaders make decision and admit subsequently that they were wrong. No one is immune from making mistakes. The difference between him and others lies in the willingness to take responsibility. He's great when it comes to words, but not so when it comes to taking action."

Intolerable risks

According to Dagan, "A nuclear-armed Iran poses an existential threat to the State of Israel. I agree more or less with Netanyahu in this regard. Two issues in particular concern me with respect to the talks between the world powers and Iran: What happens if and when the Iranians violate the agreement, and what happens when the period of the agreement comes to an end and they decide to pursue nuclear weapons?

"Israel could have ensured American assurances of action if and when the deal is broken. Given the current state of relations, however, I doubt that's achievable now.

"Netanyahu is focusing all his efforts on the Americans. He's not reaching out to the other countries. He should have gone to see (Angela) Merkel, (David) Cameron, (Francois) Hollande and (Vladimir) Putin, who he claims to be friends with, and the Chinese. By behaving in the way he is towards the US administration, he is single-handedly motivating the Americans into rushing to reach an agreement. How would Obama explain his failure to reach a deal? That he gave in to Netanyahu? Or the Republicans?"

So what do you suggest, we asked. Doing nothing?

"If I were to respond cynically, I could say: Let's declare war on the United States, lose and then ask for aid. What we could have done was buy time – clandestine operations; support for opposition forces and minorities within Iran; there are numerous options. I wouldn't have got involved in an internal American conflict, against the president. Congress will applaud Netanyahu, but the power is in the hands of the president. What will Netanyahu gain from this trip? I just don't get it. What's his objective – applause? This trip is a failure waiting to happen.

"An Israeli prime minister who enters into a confrontation with the US administration needs to consider the risks. When it comes to the settlements, there is no difference between the two parties. Nonetheless, we are protected by the American veto power. If we are at odds with the White House, we could lose that protection and, within a short space of time, find ourselves facing international sanctions.

"The risks involved in such a confrontation are intolerable. We are already paying prices today. Some I know about but cannot elaborate on."

'An Israeli prime minister who enters into a confrontation with the US administration needs to consider the risks.' (Photo: AFP)

The White House, we said, has announced that it will stop sharing with Israel classified information pertaining to the negotiations with Iran. In your experience, does such a decision trickle down to our relations with the US administration on all levels?

"Yes," Dagan said, "and it happens very quickly. The head of the CIA is a political appointee; the national security adviser is a political appointee; the secretary of state is a political appointee. They all, the lower-level officials too, work in keeping with the spirit of their commander. We've witnessed this phenomenon during confrontations in the past, with the (Jonathan) Pollard case, for example. We depend on the Americans for strategic weapons. When senior administration officials say that Israel is acting against the national interests of the United States, it represents a grave long-term danger for us.

"What message does it send when our prime minister says that we don't need information from the talks and that we have our own sources? Is he implying that we are spying on the United States?

"Our standing in the world isn't that great right now. The question of Israel's legitimacy is on the agenda. We shouldn't be gnawing away at our relations with our most important ally – certainly not in public and certainly not by getting involved in American domestic politics. This is not the kind of behaviour one expects from a prime minister."

But, we said, Netanyahu sees the deal with Iran as akin to the Munich Agreement. One can certainly understand why he is acting this way.

"So he says," Dagan replied. "I'm not convinced that he really believes that. The prime minister needs to act according to a more sober assessment. You need to think about the objective. He didn't discuss his Congress address with professional advisers (from the defense and intelligence communities). Perhaps he spoke to political advisers.

"The Iranians are watching it all unfold and they are rubbing their hands in glee. They feel like they've managed to drive a wedge between Israel and its main ally, between the little Satan and the big Satan."

The United States held talks with Iran behind Israel's back too, we said. They had discussions with the Iranians in Oman.

"I'm not happy about that at all," Dagan said. "It's a reflection of the deterioration in our relations. But the Americans aren't fools. They knew that if they are holding talks Oman, the Saudis, Jordanians and Israelis know exactly what's going on."

To defeat, not to occupy

Most Israelis breathed a sigh of relief following Operation Protective Edge in the summer; and then came the sense of disappointment – after 51 days of fighting, one could have expected a little more than a stalemate when up against an organization like Hamas. Dagan reached a different and much harsher conclusion. The operation was a "resounding failure," in his view. "What did we achieve?" he continued. "Nothing, except a ceasefire that Hamas will violate whenever it chooses.

"There have been three operations in Gaza in recent years – Cast Lead, Pillar of Defense and Protective Edge. Hamas learned its lessons well. First, we, Hamas, aren't able to go over the fence, so we'll go under it; second, Israel controls the skies, so we'll bring in and manufacture rockets; and third, Israel bombs us from the air, so we'll build bunkers.

"We didn't learn any lessons. Was there an Israeli tunnel going into Gaza? No. Did we define our strategic objectives? No. We worked towards achieving a ceasefire that simply begins the countdown to the next confrontation."

Netanyahu, we said, didn't seek to eliminate Hamas because he feared Islamic State would step into the void.

"That's nonsense," Dagan responded. "Netanyahu doesn’t understand what Islamic State is all about. Islamic State's occupation of territory was born out of circumstances related to the reality on the ground in Syria and Iraq. Islamic State has no interest in occupying territory in Gaza. Hamas' survival in Gaza served Netanyahu's interests not insofar as Islamic State is concerned, but with respect to Mahmoud Abbas.

"Netanyahu mishandled the whole thing. The only thing that interested him was to be photographed on the backdrop of maps. People say Netanyahu acted responsibly. Responsibly? It was a cover for inaction. No thought was given to what we want to achieve from this operation. Everyone knew about the tunnels. To say they didn't know isn't true. When the tunnels became a problem, they bombed the shafts from the air; and then, during the ground operation, they weren't able to locate them."

'The only thing that interested him was to be photographed on the backdrop of maps' (Photo: Haim Tsach/GPO)

What, in your opinion, should have been done, we asked.

"We needed to go for a decisive outcome against Hamas," he said. "There are three components to the war against Hamas, in the following order of importance – the leadership, the infrastructure and the soldiers. The soldiers are the least important. In a place that is home to 1,750,000 people, the soldiers are the most readily available component. The military dealt very little with the infrastructure and didn't touch the leadership. Every time they killed a Hamas member, they named him a brigade commander. I was personally offended: I was a brigade commander.

"We embarked on the operation under the most convenient circumstances, and we ended it 51 days later sorely low on munitions. We wasted strategic arms. And what did we achieve? A temporary ceasefire."

So what would you have done, we asked - occupy Gaza?

"There's no need to occupy every square meter, considering all the costs that such a move would involve. We could have won without occupying. I think Netanyahu wanted another operation like Pillar of Defense, brief and without a decisive outcome; but it didn't work out for him like that this time. He's the man who released more than 1,000 murderers, yet he flexed his muscles in his dealings with Abbas. He refused to release third-rate terrorists. We turned Abbas into a terrorist because of his negotiations with Hamas, and there was no one to talk to during the operation."

What did you expect from Netanyahu, we asked.

"We should have defeated Hamas and brought Abbas to Gaza, under the patronage of the Arab League. We are dealing for the first time with a supportive Arab League. We and the Saudis and the Gulf States and Egypt are in agreement, both with respect to Iran and when it comes to the matter of radical Islam. We are like-minded even with regards to Turkey; look at what the Egyptians think of the Turks.

"We'll always have a problem with the Palestinians. For as long as we refuse to grant the right of return – and I oppose the right of return – there will always be Palestinian elements that will seek Israel's destruction. Jordan's King Abdullah is the one defending our eastern border. He's preventing the smuggling of arms and terror into the West Bank. Without him, the West Bank would become Hamastan. That's why we need to work in close coordination with him."

As far as we know, we said, Netanyahu invests a great deal in coordination with Jordan.

"I won't tell you what I believe King Abdullah thinks of him," Dagan said. "Today, due to the war on Islamic State, he is getting the full backing of the Americans. He needs Israel less so than he did in the past.

"And what does Netanyahu do? He allows people with all kinds of wacky ideas to visit the Temple Mount, the sanctity of which is entrusted to the Jordanian king."

Dagan is convinced that the current status quo poses a danger to Israel. We have to reach an agreement with the Palestinians, he said. "Netanyahu's actions are leading us towards a bi-national state, and I don't want a bi-national state. I don't want Abbas as the prime minister of my country. Continuing to establish facts on the ground in the territories will inevitably lead us to an apartheid state."

Scott Walker on Emails

Scott Walkers email Problem

Free Bargaining vs Right To Work

What Exactly is the Difference Between ‘Right to Work’ and ‘Free Bargaining’ States 

"right to work” and “free bargaining” states?

As explained by Middle Class Missouri,

“‘Right to work’ has been created by top executives that desire higher profits by lowering wages on the middle class while taking away our voice to do anything about it … Workers in ‘right to work’ states make on average $1500 less per year than workers in states that allow employees to bargain for fair wages and benefits.”

In other words, living in one of the 23 ‘right to work’ states is more difficult because of the financial disparity. Workers in both states still have to buy food, housing, clothing, etc., but workers in ‘right to work’ states have less money with which to buy those necessities.

Watch Middle Class Missouri’s video explaining just how detrimental taking away workers’ bargaining rights really is.

also see: bankrupcy lawyers for right to ork

Every Claim Against Bill O'Reilly

Here's Every Claim Made Against Bill O'Reilly So Far

Posted: 02/27/2015 11:10 am EST Updated: 02/27/2015 2:59 pm EST

Jackson Connor Become a fanJackson.Connor@huffingtonpost.com

The list of accusations leveled at Bill O'Reilly grows by the day.

What began as a probe into the veracity of the Fox News host's war reporting experience has now snowballed into a slew of alleged lies, exaggerations and inaccuracies.

If you're having trouble keeping all these shifting stories straight, we've got your back. Here are all the major developments so far in The People vs. Bill O'Reilly:

Count 1: Bill O'Reilly Exaggerated His 'War Reporting' Chops

The Allegation: O'Reilly first came under attack last Thursday when Mother Jones' David Corn and Daniel Schulman published a piece challenging the host's claim that he had "reported on the ground in active war zones" and "survived a combat situation" while covering the Falklands War for CBS News in 1982. American reporters were not allowed in the Falklands during the conflict. So how could O'Reilly have been in the war zone?

The Defense: O'Reilly arrived in Buenos Aires shortly before Argentina surrendered to Britain. The Fox host contends that the riots he covered after the war -- demonstrators, angry that the military government had given up, took to the streets in protest -- constituted a "combat situation." When CBS released its coverage of the riots, O'Reilly declared victory, saying the tape showed "horrific” violence. While Corn and others agreed the tape showed a "chaotic, violent protest," they maintain that it was not a "combat situation."

The Verdict: While O'Reilly seems to think clashes between civilians and police constitute "combat," the technical definition of the term involves "fighting between armed forces" -- i.e. the British and Argentine militaries. The streets of Buenos Aires after the war were no doubt dangerous for reporters, but no matter how violent things got, you need two armies to have a war. The Huffington Post has covered the O'Reilly controversy from our headquarters in Greenwich Village -- we can't claim we've been "on the scene" in the host's living room.

Count 2: O'Reilly Lied About Witnessing The Suicide of George de Mohrenschildt

The Allegation: O'Reilly has claimed, both in interviews and in his book Killing Kennedy, to have been present at the suicide of George de Mohrenschildt, a Russian immigrant and friend of JFK assassin Lee Harvey Oswald.

"As the reporter knocked on the door of de Mohrenschildt's daughter's home, he heard the shotgun blast that marked the suicide of the Russian, assuring that his relationship with Lee Harvey Oswald would never be fully understood," O'Reilly wrote in Killing Kennedy. "By the way, that reporter's name is Bill O'Reilly."

But the host's former colleagues at Dallas radio station WFAA told liberal watchdog Media Matters that O'Reilly was in Texas when de Mohrenschildt killed himself. "Bill O’Reilly’s a phony," one colleague said. "There’s no other way to put it.”

In addition, Gaeton Fonzi -- "one of the most relentless investigators" on the House Select Committee on Assassinations and a journalist who covered the killing of President Kennedy extensively -- wrote in his autobiography that O'Reilly had called him from Dallas after de Mohrenschildt's death to confirm the suicide.

The Defense: While Fox News has not addressed this specific allegation, it released a general statement of support:

Bill O’Reilly has already addressed several claims leveled against him. This is nothing more than an orchestrated campaign by far left advocates Mother Jones and Media Matters. Responding to the unproven accusation du jour has become an exercise in futility. Fox News maintains its staunch support of O’Reilly, who is no stranger to calculated onslaughts.

O'Reilly's publisher also voiced its support in a statement to The Huffington Post.

"We fully stand behind Bill O’Reilly and his bestseller Killing Kennedy and we’re very proud to count him as one of our most important authors,” a spokesperson said.

The Verdict: The idea that O'Reilly arrived at de Mohrenschildt's daughter's doorstep at the exact moment a gunshot rang out indeed seems apocryphal -- it's almost too cinematic to be true. That said, with no further evidence than the word of two former employees to challenge the account, it remains a "he said, she said" situation.

Count 3: O'Reilly Lied About Witnessing The Execution Of Four Salvadoran Nuns

The Allegation: Wednesday afternoon, Media Matters accused O'Reilly of lying about having witnessed the execution of four nuns in El Salvador while reporting on the country's bloody civil war for CBS News in 1980.

"I was in El Salvador and I saw nuns get shot in the back of the head," O'Reilly said on his program in 2012.

The Defense: Through a spokesperson, O'Reilly told The Huffington Post Wednesday that he had not seen the execution of the nuns first hand, but was rather referencing unaired footage of nuns being murdered that reporters were shown at the time:

While in El Salvador, reporters were shown horrendous images of violence that were never broadcast, including depictions of nuns who were murdered. The mention of the nuns on my program came the day of the Newtown massacre (December 14, 2012). The segment was about evil and how hard it is for folks to comprehend it. I used the murdered nuns as an example of that evil. That's what I am referring to when I say ‘I saw nuns get shot in the back of the head.’ No one could possibly take that segment as reporting on El Salvador.

The Verdict: Much like his Falklands War claims, O'Reilly's tales from El Salvador lead viewers to believe the host was at the center of the actual events -- rather than the periphery. For this one, O'Reilly might get off on a technicality.

Count 4: Bill O'Reilly Lied About Being Attacked During The LA Riots

The Allegation: On Thursday, the Guardian published an article in which six of O'Reilly' former colleagues from "Inside Edition" dispute the host's claims of being "attacked by protesters” during the 1992 LA Riots.

“They were throwing bricks and stones at us,” O’Reilly said in a 2006 interview. “Concrete was raining down on us.”

“It didn’t happen,” Rick Kirkham, the lead reporter on the riots, told the Guardian. “If it did, how come none of the rest of us remember it?”

O'Reilly's former colleagues do, however, remember a single man hurling a chunk of rubble at their camera. The man was allegedly angered by O'Reilly's limousine being parked in "the smoking remains" of his neighborhood. According to two former colleagues, the driver had been polishing the vehicle and O'Reilly yelled at the man, "Don’t you know who I am?”

The Defense: A spokesperson for Fox News declined to comment on the new charges, opting to give The Guardian a familiar defense: The allegations are “nothing more than an orchestrated campaign by far left advocates” and "responding to the unproven accusation du jour has become an exercise in futility."

The Verdict: We're beginning to see a pattern here. O'Reilly was on the scene for protests in Buenos Aires, not a war on the Falkland Islands. He called a man to confirm the death of George de Mohrenschildt, but didn't hear the gunshot himself. He saw images of murdered nuns, but wasn't present for the actual executions. And now one man threw a rock at his camera, instead of an avalanche of bricks, stones and concrete raining down on his head. If not an outright liar, O'Reilly seems to have an issue with exaggeration, taking small kernels of truth and spinning them into tall tales of journalistic heroism.

Count 5: O'Reilly Threatened Journalists From Mother Jones and The New York Times

The Allegation: Throughout the saga, O'Reilly has been accused of threatening journalists reporting on the controversy. O'Reilly said that he "expected David Corn to be in the kill zone" and told a New York Times reporter, "I am coming after you with everything I have."

While left-leaning cable news network MSNBC has largely stayed silent on the story (perhaps because of "NBC Nightly News" anchor Brian Williams' own credibility crisis), Rachel Maddow blasted O'Reilly Wednesday night for intimidating journalists, saying it is "untenable" for Fox News to continue to stand by its host.

The Defense: O'Reilly brushed off the idea that he had threatened Corn with actual violence, saying the term "kill zone" was "simply a slang expression."

The Verdict: This one is pretty hard to deny, especially since O'Reilly made a point of telling the Times' reporter "you can take it as a threat." Whether O'Reilly lied about his reporting experience, threatening members of the press crosses a serious line and is unbefitting of a prime time news anchor on any network.

"Like everyone in media today, we are concerned about the safety of our staff," Mother Jones' Clara Jeffery and Monika Bauerlein wrote in a letter to Fox News. "We'd have hoped that statements with this kind of violent tone would not come from a fellow media professional."

But after all the evidence has been compiled -- from from Buenos Aires to El Salvador to Dallas, Texas, and back again -- is Bill O'Reilly ultimately guilty in the court of public opinion? Did he lie to his audience, threatening journalists along the way? What should the consequence be? That's for the public to decide.

Alabama Supreme Court Blocks Same-Sex Marriage

The Huffington Post  |  By Sam Levine

The Alabama Supreme Court on Tuesday ordered probate judges in the state to stop issuing same-sex marriage licenses.The ruling adds to the confusion surrounding gay marriage in the state. A federal judge found that the state's ban on same-sex marriage was unconstitutional in January. Some probate judges refused to comply with that ruling and Alabama Supreme Court Justice Roy Moore said that probate judges didn't have to follow it.

The conflicting orders prompted Elmore County Probate Judge John E. Enslen to ask for clarification from the Alabama Supreme Court, according to WBRC.

Read the Alabama Supreme Court's full decision here.

Below, more from The Associated Press:

MONTGOMERY, Ala. (AP) — The Alabama Supreme Court is ordering the state's probate judges to stop issuing marriage licenses to gay couples.

The all-Republican court sided with a pair of conservative organizations Tuesday in ruling that the U.S. Constitution doesn't alter the judges' duty to administer state law.

The court says Alabama has defined marriage as between only one man and one woman for about 200 years. And it says a federal court used "sleight of hand" in a case that resulted in most of Alabama allowing gay marriage last month.

The Alabama Policy Institute and the Baptist-run Alabama Citizens Action Program asked the court to halt same-sex unions after a federal judge in Mobile said Alabama laws banning them were unconstitutional.