Hobby Lobby Stores has agreed to pay a $3 million federal fine and forfeit thousands of ancient Iraqi religious artifacts smuggled from the Middle East that the government alleges were intentionally mislabeled for import, federal prosecutors said.
The Oklahoma City-based craft store chain's devout Christian owners have long shown an interest in the biblical Middle East and started to collect artifacts from the region in 2009, according to a civil complaint filed in New York on Wednesday. Hobby Lobby President Steve Green is the owner of one of the largest collections of religious artifacts in the world and is building a Museum of the Bible in Washington, D.C., due to open in the fall.
Green said in a statement that the company cooperated with the government and "should have exercised more oversight and carefully questioned how the acquisitions were handled."
TVNL Comment: Our prisons are filled with people who stole far less than Hobby Lobby. None of these men and women could have claimed they 'should have exercised more oversight.' No Hobby Lobby officer will go to prison. But their 'Christian values' prevented them from providing birth control coverage for their employees. The hypocrisy and special treatment are outrageous.
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