Fair and balanced reporting from the New Times on the invocation story...

lt took a week before the New Times' Chris Joseph chimed in on the video I took of the atheist invocation by Preston Smith on December 2nd. It's odd that we haven't heard from Fire Ant, aka Steve Ellman in a while, and this is a Lake Worth story. Is he off the beat or off the paper? The last post by him at the New Times was on November 7th. That's over a month ago. I hope that, whatever the reason for the absence, he is o.k.

Here are some interesting takeaway's from the story by Chris Joseph...

[Lake Worth] Mayor Tirolo [sic, the mayors last name is "Triolo"], hadn't addressed the walkout until Monday, when she spoke to WPTV.

"I didn't leave because Mr. Smith is an atheist; I left because of his alleged tweet," she said.

The tweet Tirolo [sic] referenced was from July, when Smith tweeted out an offensive interpretation of a biblical Scripture from Deuteronomy. Smith sent the tweet to a Chicago Tea Party activist named C. Steven Tucker after he wrote a blog post calling for Obama's impeachment.

You can see a screen grab of the tweet below, which has since been deleted from Smith's account:

Now, here comes some news. In a random act of journalism by Chris Joseph at the New Times, we get some information I haven't heard anywhere else. Here it is in the third paragraph of the excerpt below:

"Free speech works both ways," Triolo said about her walking out. "You can say what you want, and I can choose to leave."

Commissioner Christopher McVoy stayed for Smith's invocation and called his fellow commissioners' walking out "un-American."

Smith was granted permission to do the invocation back in July. He chose a date in December because it was during the Christmas holidays.

So, now we actually see the "tweet" by Preston Smith and we learn that Preston Smith specifically wanted a date in December closer to the Christmas holiday season. And for some reason the city accommodated his request and this is going to be a bigger issue now due to the holiday season. Clearly, Mr. Smith pursued this opportunity with a zeal and a clear strategy in mind. It would be interesting to know how Mr. Smith was initially introduced to Lake Worth. Could fingers be pointed at some usual suspects?

The bell has been rung. So, now we have to deal with its aftermath. As of this morning, the video from the meeting has gotten over 43,000 hits and is being picked up by national news sites.