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U.S. Rep. Michele Bachmann said on “Hot Tea” radio yesterday that she is sick of “radical leftist organizations” that “intimidate Christians” from speaking about politics from the pulpit.

Bachmann called for Congress to repeal the federal law that prevents all 501(c)(3) nonprofit organizations, including houses of worship, from endorsing or opposing candidates.

As last week came to a close, the Secular Coalition of America – an advocacy group made up of atheists, agnostics and humanists – had a chance to meet with members of the Obama Administration.

The meeting on Friday reportedly marked the first time American non-believers have ever met with White House officials, and it really struck a nerve with the Religious Right.

Let’s close out the week with a selection of updates and news tidbits that you might have missed:

I love the Winter Olympics—the ski jumping, the hockey games, the figure skating rivalries and even the curling have kept me glued to my TV for the Vancouver games. I find the athleticism and precision required of these winter sports fascinating, but many of my friends consider the time trials and individual events too redundant to watch.

The infamous “C Street house” is back in the news.

A group of clergy in Ohio, aided by a tax lawyer, has written to the Internal Revenue Service today asking the federal tax agency to examine the house’s tax-exempt status as a church.

If you’re just joining us, the C Street house is a structure in Washington, D.C., owned by a shadowy Religious Right group called “The Family” – a.k.a. the Fellowship Foundation.

The one-year anniversary today of the unveiling of President Barack Obama’s version of the “faith-based” initiative has pushed the issue back into the spotlight. Unfortunately, the news is not good.

Speaking at yesterday’s National Prayer Breakfast, Obama boasted that he had “turned the faith-based initiative around.”

I was surprised to read that statement, because everything I see indicates that we’re still fighting the same old battles over faith-based funding that erupted during the Bush years.

Note: Today is the federal observance of Dr. Martin Luther King’s birthday. This blog post is a re-publication on an item that originally appeared on Jan. 13, 2006.

Today marks the federal observance of Dr. Martin Luther King’s birthday. Since his tragic assassination on April 4, 1968, King’s memory has been pressed into service in highly unusual ways that King himself would not have supported.

Some people in Alabama seem to have their priorities mixed up.

There’s a Republican gubernatorial primary currently underway in the state, and you would think that citizens would be focused on the candidates’ positions on issues such as education, health care and the economy. What has some people reeling, though, is a candidate’s views on the Bible!

Back in November, the Mobile Press-Register quoted candidate Bradley Byrne as saying, “I believe there are parts of the Bible that are meant to be literally true and parts that are not.”

Part of my job here at Americans United is to correspond with the general public. Frequently I find myself engaged in answering the most basic of questions. I’m often explaining the significance of Thomas Jefferson’s letter to the Danbury Baptists wherein he coined the phrase “wall of separation between church and state.”

Here’s some news you might have missed in the holiday shuffle last week: Wiley Drake, pastor of the First Southern Baptist Church in Buena Park, Calif., and former vice president of the Southern Baptist Convention, has issued a press release calling for the end to an “imprecatory prayer” for President Barack Obama’s death.