Media Watch

Unborn Lost in the Translation

COLUMBIA (Missouri) DAILY TRIBUNE, June 29—It seems that some Democratic presidential candidates have become coy about their pro-abortion politics—at least when it comes to Spanish-speaking voters.

According to a June 29 report by the Columbia Daily Tribune, two of the candidates for the Democratic nomination for president omit their strong pro-abortion stances on their Spanish Web sites: the (formerly pro-life) Rep. Dick Gephardt, D-Mo., and Sen. Joe Lieberman, D-Conn.

Is it a strategic choice, knowing that many Hispanics, Catholic and not, wouldn't vote for someone they know to favor killing the unborn?

When contacted, the congressmen's campaigns said they simply had not finished their translation work on the sites. They promised that the candidates' strong “pro-choice” positions would find their way onto the sites when they were completed—although, according to the paper, they did not specify when that would happen.

Wal-Mart Embraces ‘Gay Rights’

THE ASSOCIATED PRESS, July 2—After an extensive lobbying campaign conducted by a small group of homosexual-activist shareholders, America's largest private employer, Wal-Mart Corp., has decided to include homosexuals in the list of protected groups in its anti-discrimination policy, according to the Associated Press.

The Pride Foundation, which led the shareholder campaign, boasted about the policy change it had wrought:

“The change means nine of the 10-largest Fortune 500 companies now have rules prohibiting discrimination against gay employees, according to the Human Rights Campaign. The one exception is the Exxon Mobil Corp.,” it said in a statement.

For those concerned with the traditional family, the news was a disappointment, coming less than two months after the retail chain removed several racy magazines from its shelves. Wal-Mart also will require its 1.1 million employees to undergo “sensitivity training.”

Ten Commandments Un-American?

CNSNEWS.COM, July 2—In what CNSNews.com called a stinging rebuke, a federal appeals court on July 1 demanded that Alabama Supreme Court Chief Justice Roy Moore remove his display of the Ten Commandments from his courthouse—and asserted that the commandments had played no major part in American history.

The three-judge panel of the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals compared Moore's refusal to remove the monument to past refusal of southern governors to comply with desegregation orders.

“That there were some government acknowledgments of God at the time of this country's founding and indeed are some today, however, does not justify under the Establishment Clause a 5,280-pound granite monument placed in the central place of honor in a state's judicial building,” the court ruled.

One of its arguments against the monument was that it used a specific Protestant translation and ordering of the commandments, which Jews and Catholics might find objectionable—although no Catholic groups were involved in the attempt to remove the monument.

Moore has garnered vast public support among Alabama