Religious Outreach
NEW YORK -- As the spiritual adviser to Brooklyn drug dealers, Mercedes Osario allegedly was paid to warn if police were in their future.
Prosecutors claim her mystical powers failed. Miserably.
Brooklyn District Attorney Charles Hynes on Tuesday announced a 133-count indictment against 15 people, including Osario and members of a drug crew that used its own fleet of cars to make cocaine deliveries to regular customers.
Osario, 53, was charged with misdemeanor weapons possession, which carries a maximum one-year prison term. A woman answering the phone at her home on Tuesday said, "She doesn't know anything about this," but she declined further comment.
Authorities portrayed Osario as a practitioner of the Afro-Caribbean Santeria faith and "business adviser" to the gang. Santeria blends African spiritual beliefs with Roman Catholic traditions.
Osario was put on the gang payroll "to foresee the future," said chief gang prosecutor Deanna Rodriguez.
The crew, Rodriguez said, would inquire, "We're going to do this drug transaction. Is it the right time?"
[Full Story]
Maybe with a reference from her former gang she could get a job as John Kerry's "religion outreach director." After all Kerry's recent addition of Maria Vanderslice in this job is not much different. Christopher at Catholic Kerry Watch has the details on Maria Vanderslice and maybe she is what Democrats might consider as religious outreach.
Ultimately, I can't separate my Christianity from my values or my values from my politics. For me, being engaged in politics is an expression of my deepest held religious beliefs -- it is about actualizing a collective commitment to protect the integrity of God's creation, it's about meeting the needs of the "least of these," and about our nation being a generous and trustworthy leader in the world. There are certainly positions taken by leading Democrats with which many Christians won't agree -- and many Christians are appalled by what they see as the exploitation of religion for political gain on the part of the Republican Party.
"it is about actualizing a collective commitment to protect the integrity of God's creation." I just love progressive-ecological-mumbo-jumbo-speech.
Known as 
I assume since you know about Mara Vanderslice, you also know that she used to speak at rallies for ACT-UP, a radical pro-homosexuality group that spit the Eucharist onto the floor of St. Patrick's Cathedral in 1989?
What you may not know is that Mrs. Heinz-Kerry may be funding the exact same organization.
One can only hope that her malpractice insurance was paid up......
I see a lot of Kerry comments on this blog which are informative and all that but I just have this visceral response to GW and especially Dick C. They make me sick. I still have yet to see anything that honestly justifies invading Iraq. . .