Right Wing Nut House

As political corruption goes, news that New York Governor Elliot Spitzer consorts with high class call girls is pretty low on the sin-o-meter. It was, however, a shock to learn a man mentioned in some circles as presidential material could have been so careless and stupid.

Just what possesses a man who has everything going for him to become enmeshed in such an embarrassing scandal?

We see it time and time again and ask the same questions over and over. The fact of the matter is, these politicians exist in a political (and social) system that makes them feel entitled to break the law, play around on their wives, and use their elected position to sate their appetites. In Spitzer’s case, we have no idea how long he has been visiting prostitutes. He may have been doing it all his married life.

As the product of a wealthy family that carries its own set of entitlements, Spitzer’s dalliances as governor might be explained as simply an extension of the entitlement he felt as a rich man’s son. And his hubris in believing no one would ever find out is part and parcel of a powerful politician’s sense of invulnerability - a fool’s belief in their own indestructibility.

It all caught up with the soon to be former New York governor yesterday:

The federal investigation of a New York prostitution ring was triggered by Gov. Eliot Spitzer’s suspicious money transfers, initially leading agents to believe Spitzer was hiding bribes, according to federal officials.

It was only months later that the IRS and the FBI determined that Spitzer wasn’t hiding bribes but payments to a company called QAT, what prosecutors say is a prostitution operation operating under the name of the Emperors Club.

As recently as this past Valentine’s Day, Feb. 13, Spitzer, who officials say is identified in a federal complaint as “Client 9,” arranged for a prostitute “Kristen” to meet him in Washington, D.C.

The woman met Client 9 at the Mayflower Hotel, room 871, “for her tryst,” according to the complaint. Client 9 also is alleged to have paid for the woman’s train tickets, cab fare, mini bar and room service, travel time and hotel.

The suspicious financial activity was initially reported by a bank to the IRS which, under direction from the Justice Department, brought kin the FBI’s Public Corruption Squad.

One of the more delicious ironies of this entire matter is the fact that Spitzer led the feds to the prostitution ring through his suspicious money transfers rather than the feds catching him as a result of any investigation into interstate prostitution. In short, Spitzer brought the world down on top of himself by his own actions - a truly biblical happenstance.

The comparisons to Republican politicians caught up in similar circumstances are being denied by liberals in the most uproariously amusing fashion imaginable. World Famous Sock Puppet Lambchop supplies the jaw dropping explanation:

But how can his alleged behavior — paying another adult roughly $1,000 per hour to travel from New York to Washington to meet him for sex — possibly justify resignation, let alone criminal prosecution, conviction and imprisonment? Independent of the issue of his hypocrisy — which is an issue meriting attention and political criticism but not criminal prosecution — what possible business is it of anyone’s, let alone the state’s, what he or anyone else does in their private lives with other consenting adults?

With all of the intense hand-wringing abounding, it’s very difficult to discern the standard being applied here. Are any public officials who commit adultery engaged in such morally intolerable behavior that they ought to resign, because that didn’t seem to be the standard back in the 1990s? Or is that any illegal behavior of any kind — no matter how serious or frivolous, whether victim-creating or victimless — merits resignation? If a political official smokes pot, or gambles in a poker game, or commits adultery in a state where adultery is a crime, are they now so morally beyond the pale that it is time for them to go? Is that the standard here?

Evidently, only Republicans who engage in these affairs are evil. Here’s Lambchop on Senator David Vitter after that hypocrite got outed:

So, to recap: in Louisiana, Vitter carried on a year-long affair with a prostitute in 1999. Then he ran for the House as a hard-core social conservative family values candidate, parading around his wife and kids as props and leading the public crusade in defense of traditional marriage.

Then, in Washington, he became a client of Deborah Palfrey’s. Then he announced that amending the Constitution to protect traditional marriage was the most important political priority the country faces. Rush Limbaugh, Fred Thompson and Newt Gingrich supported the same amendment.

As always, it is so striking how many Defenders of Traditional Marriage have a record in their own broken lives of shattered marriages, multiple wives and serial adultery. And they never seek to protect the Sacred Institution of Traditional Marriage by banning the un-Christian and untraditional divorces they want for themselves when they are done with their wives and are ready to move on to the next, newer model. Instead, they only defend these Very Sacred Values by banning the same-sex marriages that they don’t want for themselves.

(HT: Reihl)

Lambchop is very careful in his dismissive piece on Spitzer to point out the hypocrisy (on one level) of the governor who prosecuted prostitution rings while US Attorney. That’s a pretty shallow analysis when you consider Spitzer’s entire campaign was based on his adherence to a higher ethical standard than his opponents as well fostering the belief that he was a dedicated family man. I guess just as long as you support gay marriage, you get a virtual pass from Mr. Lambchop who has had a change of heart about politicians and prostitutes now that a Democrat is in trouble.

What a tool.

In the end, the Vitters, the Foleys and the Spitzers of the world have one thing in common; an inability to resist the temptations that go with holding high office and a moral blind spot when it comes to justifying their own behavior. One might add that politicians who continue to abuse the public trust by not holding themselves to a higher personal standard than the rest of us must believe that they will never get caught. Perhaps many never do and the ones who make the front pages of newspapers are simply careless and stupid.

All the more reason to employ a healthy cynicism when supporting any politician - even one who claims to represent “change” and proclaims himself a new kind of politician practicing a new kind of politics. An informed citizenry in a democracy looks at its leaders with a jaundiced eye and sees beyond the claims of moral superiority to make a decision based on what they see of a candidate’s judgement and experience. Hero worship will only lead to bitter disappointment and the revelation that their man on a white horse has feet of clay.

They are, after all, human. And that might be the best reason to vote for them in the first place.

Man, you knew this was coming. Super Delegates in Ohio are demanding a quid pro quo for their vote. And they don’t care if it’s Hillary or Obama that meets it:

Ohio Democratic Rep. Marcy Kaptur, one of the leading protectionists in Congress, said Ohioans have many suggestions on economic and trade issues they hoped the candidates would address.

“We have a laundry list of measures we think would be effective, some involving tax policy, some involving investment policy, intellectual property incentives to hold investments in this country,” Kaptur said. “I’m hoping superdelegates [who] are uncommitted that have the economy as their major concern will gravitate to our group and use that power to gain additional attention.”

Much of this article originally appears in The American Thinker

Among congressional Democrats from Ohio, only Rep. Stephanie Tubbs Jones, a Clinton backer, has endorsed. The rest — Kaptur, Reps. Dennis J. Kucinich, Tim Ryan, Zack Space, Betty S. Sutton and Charlie Wilson, and Sen. Sherrod Brown — remain uncommitted even after their state’s voters handed Clinton a decisive victory in Tuesday’s Democratic primary.

“We had a general agreement,” Kucinich said of the pact. “We have economic issues that need to be addressed. Ohio has economic issues more urgent than any other state.”

This will be a treat to watch. How many of these “deals” do you think are going to be announced and how many are going to take place in some smokey back room? Just what is the presidency worth? Perhaps a more accurate question is what do you think it will go for this year? How many more billions will either Hillary or Obama be willing to add to federal spending to fulfill their promises to these delegatations and receive their support?

For a party predisposed to spend the living daylights out of the budget, having a front row seat for this bidding war is going to be like watching an auction at Christie’s involving a Da Vinci or Rembrandt.

So sit back and relax. Make some popcorn if you like. And make sure you have your calculator handy because adding up the goodies for each state’s delegation is going to be hard to follow without one.

Portions of this article appear in The American Thinker

Executive Editor Bill Keller defending the Times McCain smear:

“On the substance, we think the story speaks for itself. In all the uproar, no one has challenged what we actually reported. On the timing, our policy is, we publish stories when they are ready.

” ‘Ready’ means the facts have been nailed down to our satisfaction, the subjects have all been given a full and fair chance to respond, and the reporting has been written up with all the proper context and caveats. This story was no exception. It was a long time in the works. It reached my desk late Tuesday afternoon. After a final edit and a routine check by our lawyers, we published it.”

The reason no one is challenging what you reported, Bill, is because it is impossible to challenge innuendo and snide implications. If you had come right out and said “McCain is screwing this broad” you would have been branded liars. Instead, you’ve earned the sobriquet “smear merchant” which has a long and illustrious history in American journalism.

As for other aspects of the story, your boast that no one has “challenged” the facts is simply a lie. Former McCain aide John Weaver denies he played the role of corroborating witness to the “intervention” with Ms. Iseman that you story claims:

The New York Times asked for a formal interview and I said no and asked for written questions. The Times knew of my meeting with Ms. Iseman, from sources they didn’t identify to me, and asked me about that meeting. I did not inform Senator McCain that I asked for a meeting with Ms. Iseman. [ed. note: McCain denied any knowledge of this meeting in his morning presser.]

Her comments, which had gotten back to some of us, that she had strong ties to the Commerce Committee and his staff were wrong and harmful and I so informed her and asked her to stop with these comments and to not be involved in the campaign. Nothing more and nothing less.

I responded to the Times on the record about a meeting they already knew about. The campaign received a copy of my response to the Times the same day, which was in late December.

Ed Morrssey places this denial in context:

Iseman had bragged about her connections to the committee in order to expand her client list. Weaver heard about it and told her to knock it off, or she’d get frozen out. Lobbyists collect clients by making themselves appear influential, and apparently Iseman got a little too hyperbolic about her connections.

That’s the extent of the supposed “intervention” — and the Times knew it.

Morrissey’s post also has an interesting twist via Martin’s Politico blog where a former press secretary for McCain thinks it likely the leaks came from lobbyists and not campaign staffers. If true, this would be a far more compelling story of how the New York Times got taken by a couple of shills jealous of Iseman’s access?

In truth, this seems to be where all the various threads come together; Iseman’s privileged position as a friend/close associate/advisor to McCain. It is the cause of the rumored infidelity, the influence peddling, and the inappropriate interventions by McCain on her behalf.

As for the infidelity, the Times story itself never comes out and says it existed because they had no witnesses or documentary proof. To imply that McCain was fooling around anyway was the height of irresponsibility and is the definition of a smear. In addition, other staffers in the know vehemently deny there was anything romantic in the McCain-Iseman relationship.

As for the rest, the rebuttal to influence peddling charges supplied by McCain’s lawyer Bob Bennett is pretty thorough. It turns out McCain did not intervene directly on behalf of Paxson Communications in order to get a favorable ruling from the FCC. What he did was write a letter asking that the FCC get off its butt and rule on the matter. I wrote this at AT this morning:

It should be pointed out that there are 100 senators currently serving and if there is one of those senators who hasn’t written a letter to get some dead weight bureaucrat off his duff and do his job in approving or disapproving a company’s request so that the business doesn’t go bankrupt waiting for the agency to do its job I would be shocked.

Arizona Senator McCain intervened on behalf of a Florida company at the behest of a lobbyist (Iseman) who he happened to be friends with. A credible case can be made that in his capacity as Chairman of the Commerce Committee, McCain was legitimately carrying out his responsibilities. An equally good case can be made that McCain was stretching it. Is this news? McCain himself has elevated his own standard of behavior above this sort of thing so in that sense it is a minor point against him.

Front page news in the New York Times? Doubt it.

The same goes for the rest of the “transgressions” that in reading them seem picky and petty. Again, in the context that McCain holds himself to a higher standard than other politicians, it is a legitimate news item. But plane rides? Letters to bureaucrats? Are these the kinds of “hypocrisies” that rise to the level of front page news in the “newspaper of record?”

No. What makes this front page news and caused the Times to send 4 reporters out trying to dig up dirt on McCain was the sex angle and only the sex angle. The Times thought it had a juicy sex story about a Republican “Family Values” politician and devoted god knows how many man hours to trying to ferret it out. They failed abysmally and know it. Instead of coming forward to defend themselves against allegations of political character assassination, they have hunkered down and decided to try and ride out the storm by staying mum.

Maybe TNR’s Franklin Foer should give Bill Keller a call and tell him how successful that strategy was.

Mike Huckabee has said some very strange things this campaign season - mostly to obscure his center-left record as a tax and spend populist while governor of Arkansas. But during his speech Monday night in front of his most fervent supporters in Michigan, Huckabee said something that revealed perhaps the true nature of his candidacy and what it means for America and his brand of “conservatism:”

“[Some of my opponents] do not want to change the Constitution, but I believe it’s a lot easier to change the constitution than it would be to change the word of the living God, and that’s what we need to do is to amend the Constitution so it’s in God’s standards rather than try to change God’s standards,” Huckabee said, referring to the need for a constitutional human life amendment and an amendment defining marriage as between a man and a woman.

The Reverend Huckabee must be a privileged individual indeed to know the mind of God. I suppose it’s all a matter of interpretation; some people might violently disagree with the good reverend about just what those “standards” of God might be. But since Reverend Huckabee has been given the grace to see the light and pronounce the one true list of standards God has set for us then I guess the debate is over and we can simply bow to his superior insights and extra special holiness.

Christian conservatives are fond of saying that their critics don’t want freedom of religion but freedom from religion. In the grossest sense I suppose that’s true. But those making that argument ignore the ramifications of what they are proposing when protesting that they only want to be able to practice their religion in the public square. If that’s all there was too it, I doubt that too many Americans would be uneasy or even fearful. But then along comes Mike Huckabee talking about basically establishing God’s kingdom here in America by amending our Constitution to reflect his idea of “God’s standards” in moral behavior and even Christian evangelicals must look in askance at the Reverend’s candidacy.

As a conservative, I stand on the side of tradition so that when headline seeking atheists and their buddies at the ACLU initiate some unnecessary court action to remove a creche that has been placed in front of some city hall for a hundred years or a cross that has stood atop a mountain for 80 years and has become the centerpiece of a Korean War memorial, I stand with the Christians in complete confidence that I am living up to my conservative ideals. But Huckabee’s all too revealing utterance about exactly how he seeks to accomplish his idea of a “just moral order” should cause every conservative worth their stripes to denounce the candidate’s words and deplore his candidacy.

The impulse that drives Huckabee and his supporters is not a conservative one. It is a statist impulse - a desire to use the power of the government to enforce arbitrary standards of moral behavior on the rest of us. It is taking the conservative dictum requiring a moral order for justice to thrive and twisting the concept to allow for one group to not only dictate morality but also impose their own, necessarily narrow view of justice.

For my lefty friends who may not be familiar with conservative philosophy, I can assure you that going all the way back to Locke and coming forward to the present, you will not find Mr. Huckabee’s notion of state imposed religious standards for either personal behavior or law anywhere. It is, as Andy McCarthy of NRO puts rather mildly, anti-Democratic in the extreme:

Lisa, it’s really infuriating if you’ve had the experience — as I have — of being portrayed at various panels as part of the “American Taliban” for defending the purportedly Islamophobic efforts to root out Muslim terrorists. Part of my usual response, as a demonstration of how nuts this accusation is, focuses on the Taliban, their imposition of sharia (i.e., God’s law), and the marked contrast to our system’s bedrock guarantee of freedom of conscience.

Huckabee is made to order for the Left: his rhetoric embodies their heretofore lunatic indictment that we’re no better that what we’re fighting against. Let’s “amend the Constitution so it’s in God’s standards rather than try to change God’s standards”? Who needs to spin when the script speaks for itself? Where has Huck been for the last seven years? Does he not get that our enemies — the people who want to end our way of life — believe they are simply imposing God’s standards?

McCarthy’s reference to a “bedrock guarantee of freedom of conscience” is, in fact, the essence of conservatism. Huckabee apparently rejects this basic freedom as not being up to “God’s standards” and seeks to substitute a capricious slavishness to a single, dominant, narrow moral criterion that brooks no questions because it establishes itself from God.

As McCarthy points out, this is exactly the same thing our enemies wish to impose upon us and the rest of the world. Who cares if it comes from a devout Christian or a devout Muslim. The effect is the same.

The friction between genuine conservatives (even genuine social conservatives) and Huckabee and his acolytes is the story of this election. The Huckabites feel they are being put upon for their religious beliefs. Not hardly. In fact, most Christian conservatives are not supporting Mr. Huckabee. Where the fracture is occurring is in the Huckabites contention that their narrow, warped view of conservatism should dominate and rule the Republican party, that their issues should be given superior weight to other conservative issues.

Giving in to them would betray everything most of the conservative movement stands for. And giving them the leadership of the party would be a catastrophe for conservatism and for the country.

I would suggest those conservatives who prior to this had been taken in by Mr. Huckabee’s easy smile and winning personality to think twice before voting for this charlatan.

Joe Gandelman received a cryptic email from “a spokesman for Revelation Press” that indicates a major scandal is brewing involving a “Leading US Presidential Candidate.”

One of this year’s leading candidates will be “Swift-Boated” in a new book to be announced next Monday, January 7th at 1:30 p.m. in the Murrow Room at the National Press Club in Washington.

One candidate is about to be challenged – with hard and cold facts, presented cogently by an author, former TV business news editor, decorated military hero and college political science instructor who shares this candidate’s party affiliation – and who has known the candidate personally since their college days.

Next Monday, the truth will be revealed when a book that literally gives “chapter and verse” about this candidate’s less-than-candid candor with the American people.

This book is supported by 10 pages of meticulously-researched end-notes supporting every factual assertion about the candidate’s failure to shoot straight with the American people, and this breach-of-faith’s implications for the Presidency.

If you’re serious about covering the 2008 Presidential campaign, you won’t want to miss this news announcement – and you will want to meet the author.

The candidate isn’t mentioned but the military angle would seem to suggest an attack on John McCain.

The same fellow who mounted the Viet Nam Veterans Against John Kerry now has a group called Viet Nam Veterans Against John McCain. Gerard “Jerry” Kiley is claiming that McCain betrayed the United States as a POW and hints that he is being blackmailed even today by the Vietnamese.

I will not sully this site with details of the charges. I will only say that any legitimate news outlet that attends that press conference or runs with any story connected with these folks should be sued by the McCain campaign.

Kiley also has a campaign committee to raise funds and presumably run commercials against McCain.

What has Kiley’s panties in a twist? Apparently, Senator McCain - despite his treatment at the hands of the enemy - was willing to make peace with his former captors, establish normalized relations with Viet Nam, and most of all, wanted to put the Viet Nam War behind us.

I think honest people can disagree about whether it is a good thing to normalize relations with Viet Nam. They are still a communist country with all the oppression and lack of freedom that implies. But not wanting to put the war behind us? I think it is long past time for that to occur. And McCain demonstrated true statesmanship by leading the way in Congress to achieve normalization.

Of course, at bottom, is the POW issue. So many are still listed as missing. To this day, sightings of white men in jungle prisons haunts the dreams of those whose loved ones never returned and are unaccounted for.

But nothing has ever come of those sightings. And while it is not my place nor my desire to close off hope for those with so little of it, I think McCain did well in leading the way to a new relationship with one of the emerging powerhouse economies in Asia. He put aside his personal feelings for the good of the country - a demonstration of leadership.

And the curious thing is that these charges against McCain have been around for years, dating back to the Senator’s 2000 bid for the presidency. I don’t recall hearing anything about them back then but of course, that was the era before blogs and a ubiquitous internet. Now all you have to do is throw a pile of crap out into the ether and someone will latch onto it and run with it. So it will probably be with this rehash of old charges against a courageous man.

Could Romney be behind this coming smear campaign? Not likely because all the principles have been active for years against Senator McCain. Besides, why wait until one day before the voting in New Hampshire to spring this? Anyway, this is pretty much as low as politics gets in America and I don’t think Romney is really that sort of candidate.

For some, the war will never end. Only when the last Viet Nam era American passes on will the War in Viet Nam truly be over. Until then, all we can do is honor the dead, comfort the living, and give thanks that patriots like John McCain - a man whose politics I sometimes abhor - are still serving this country today.

UPDATE

Tommy Toliver doesn’t think it’s McCain who is the target of the smear. I have also received several emails questioning whether or not it’s McCain.

My belief that it’s the Arizona Senator in the crosshairs was on the Viet Nam Veterans Against John McCain website. If you scroll down (no permalinks) you will find an article by John LeBoutillier entitled “McCain Bombs as Candidate.” Directly underneath is the subhead:

“Swiftboating” New American Political Jargon Term Meaning “Outing” the Fraudulent.

Several commenters on this and other threads have complained that by using the term “siwftboating,” the author of the upcoming smear against the presidential candidate is adopting the definition used by liberals; i.e., lies and distortions against a candidate.

But as you can see, they use the same definition that the “Revelations” emailer used when touting their press conference. This is what led me to believe that the Viet Vets Against McCain were behind this effort.

As far as the author knowing McCain back in their “college days” that could very well just be a substitution in order to hide the identity of the candidate to be smeared. After all, the Naval Academy is an accredited college - one of the finest in the country. If they had come out and said the author had known McCain from their days together at Annapolis, that would have let the cat out of the bag.

That was my reasoning for believing the target was McCain. However, other information emailed to me makes me doubt my original hypothesis and it may very well be someone else.

It is difficult to write about religion in politics these days. Chances are, you either muck it up and offend someone or worse, you get it right and offend someone. The point being, there are many who will read into what you write whatever they please, eager to rhetorically bash your head in because you are making a point with which they violently disagree.

Simply put, the intrusion of religion into politics has gone beyond what it should in a healthy democracy and somebody, somewhere has to say so.

Thank you Charles Krauthammer:

This campaign is knee-deep in religion, and it’s only going to get worse. I’d thought that the limits of professed public piety had already been achieved during the Republican CNN-YouTube debate when some squirrelly looking guy held up a Bible and asked, “Do you believe every word of this book?” — and not one candidate dared reply: None of your damn business.

Instead, Giuliani, Romney and Huckabee bent a knee and tried appeasement with various interpretations of scriptural literalism. The right answer, the only answer, is that the very question is offensive. The Constitution prohibits any religious test for office. And while that proscribes only government action, the law is also meant to be a teacher. In the same way that civil rights laws established not just the legal but also the moral norm that one simply does not discriminate on the basis of race — changing the practice of one generation and the consciousness of the next — so the constitutional injunction against religious tests is meant to make citizens understand that such tests are profoundly un-American.

Now, there’s nothing wrong with having a spirited debate on the place of religion in politics. But the candidates are confusing two arguments. The first, which conservatives are winning, is defending the legitimacy of religion in the public square. The second, which conservatives are bound to lose, is proclaiming the privileged status of religion in political life.

I’m not talking about criticizing the idea that faith animates a candidate’s position on the issues. Nor am I calling for a moratorium on talking about religion in a political context. Neither is Krauthammer. What Krauthammer is saying - and what I am agreeing with - is that a line has been crossed, most notably on the Republican side, that seeks to give religion a privileged position in policy debates - absolute moral authority with a vengeance based not on the efficacy of one’s position on the issues but rather on the strength or nature of their religious beliefs:

Imposing religion means the mandating of religious practice. It does not mean the mandating of social policy that some people may have come to support for religious reasons.

But a certain kind of conservative is not content to argue that a religious underpinning for a policy is not disqualifying. He insists that it is uniquely qualifying, indeed, that it confers some special status.

Krauthammer easily demolishes the leftist idea that posits the notion that faith based opposition to abortion or gay marriage is somehow indicative of a desire to “impose” one form of religion or another on the American populace. For the Christian right, these are moral issues they are fighting for - the same kind of moral fight carried out by the left to achieve civil rights for blacks, women, and others. No one complained when the Christian preacher Martin Luther King framed the civil rights debate in biblical terms of loving your neighbor and “doing God’s will” in holding a mirror up so that America could see the ugliness of racial bigotry. King even patterned his political campaign to change America on the Christian notion of “turning the other cheek” when confronted with the violent reaction by southern authorities.

But there is a huge difference between being inspired or animated in your politics by religion and thrusting your religious beliefs forward as “proof” of your superiority as a candidate. Or that your faith gives you a privileged position in a debate over public policy issues.

And that, boys and girls, is the problem with this GOP field. The Democrats have their own agenda when it comes to trying to appeal to Christians. Witness Barack Obama’s efforts in South Carolina where he staged a “Gospel-fest” featuring some of the country’s finest Gospel singers. But Obama seems to wear his faith like an old coat - comfortable and roomy. Candidates Romney and Huckabee wear their faith like a straitjacket, the tenets of which limit their worldview while binding them to positions on social issues that brook no opposition because they are based on holy writ.

Romney made this clear in his “Faith in America” speech. An excellent speech for the most part in which Romney made the case for religious liberty quite eloquently, it nevertheless featured some troubling omissions as well as a statement that is patently false:

Romney has been faulted for not throwing at least one bone of acknowledgment to nonbelievers in his big religion speech last week. But he couldn’t, because the theme of the speech was that there is something special about having your values drawn from religious faith. Indeed, faith is politically indispensable. “Freedom requires religion,” Romney declared, “just as religion requires freedom.”

But this is nonsense — as Romney then proceeded to demonstrate in that very same speech. He spoke of the empty cathedrals in Europe. He’s right about that: Postwar Europe has experienced the most precipitous decline in religious belief in the history of the West. Yet Europe is one of the freest precincts on the planet. It is an open, vibrant, tolerant community of more than two dozen disparate nations living in a pan-continental harmony and freedom unseen in all previous European history.

I totally reject the idea that freedom and religion are interchangeable or that one “requires” the other. Not only for the reasons Krauthammer lists but because while freedom is the natural state of man, that we were born free, religion is, for all practical purposes, a man made institution. It must be taught and so is not part of the “natural law” that makes all men free. Exercising the freedom to believe anything you wish is a natural right but not the belief itself.

I realize I’m treading on dangerous ground since most “natural rights” adherents believe that freedom is God’s gift to humans at birth. As an atheist, I reject that notion based simply on the fact that God is not necessary in this equation. Being born free is our patrimony as human beings and does not require any kind of supreme being to validate it.

Just as government is designed by man to regulate the affairs of citizens - who in an ideal situation grant the government the powers necessary to do so - religion is designed by man to regulate behavior. While some recent research shows that we have genes that give us a conscience and perhaps even a gene that grants us a propensity to believe in a higher power, the fact is cultural and moral strictures must be taught and are therefore excluded in any debate over the necessity for faith and freedom to co-exist in a democracy.

Romney was right in saying his faith shouldn’t exclude him from consideration for the presidency. But he was dead wrong in positing the notion that faith promotes freedom and vice versa:

In some times and places, religion promotes freedom. In other times and places, it does precisely the opposite, as is demonstrated in huge swaths of the Muslim world, where religion has been used to impose the worst kind of unfreedom.

In this country, there is no special political standing that one derives from being a Christian leader like Mike Huckabee or a fervent believer like Mitt Romney. Just as there should be no disability or disqualification for political views that derive from religious sensibilities, whether the subject is civil rights or stem cells.

In the past, the issue of the religious beliefs of a candidate was something discussed only in those long, Sunday edition newspaper articles that profiled a candidate’s background and upbringing. But with the possible exception of Jimmy Carter and his admission to being “born again” as a Christian, I can’t recall a campaign season where religiosity has been so visible, sprinkling the discussion of issues with biblical quotes and other outward manifestations of faith. Candidates raise it casually in the course of their stump speech or, like Mike Huckabee, when explaining his sudden rise in the polls and attributing it to a higher power.

No one ever pointed out the discrepancy in say, Nixon’s Quakerism and his fighting the Viet Nam war. Today, charges of “hypocrisy” would abound from his political opponents. And that’s the difference between a political culture that respects and appreciates faith, putting it carefully in a place where it informs a candidate’s position on issues and candidates that push faith front and center in order to gain a political advantage.

Religion as a supplement that unites us or as a wedge that divides us. Isn’t that what the debate is really about?

UPDATE

Allow me to take cover behind Ed Morrissey:

The Republican primary risks falling into a theological beauty contest. Mike Huckabee and Mitt Romney have actual policy positions and track records as governors, something that pundits and the media seem to have forgotten. Neither man is running for Pope — neither man qualifies, of course — and the nature of their doctrines matter little in comparison to the nature of those policies they espouse.

Let’s call off the revival, please, and get back to policy.

Baseball has been played in the United States in one form or another since at least colonial times. Imported from England, the game of “Rounders” featured a ball and a bat along with something approximating bases. Rules and scoring were much different than today’s game. however.

A purely American offshoot of Rounders was “One ole Cat” or just “Cat.” Again, the essentials were similar but it was nothing we’d recognize as baseball.

Then along came “Town Ball” in the 1840’s - a thoroughly American game where in order to get the batter “out,” the fielder would have to hit the player while he was in motion and off the base. Since the game was usually played with rocks of various sizes, you can see the enormous amount of fun players had in recording outs.

Then in 1845, Alexander Cartwright wrote out 20 specific rules for what he called Base Ball that standardized base distances and made up something we would almost recognize as today’s game.

It wasn’t until the 1857 when New Yorkers took the game of Base Ball and altered the rules a bit (no need to hit the runner anymore) and thus gave us the national pastime. It had a set number of players on each side with an infield and bases that looked similar to what we have today. They made the game 9 innings and established the idea of “strikes” - balls thrown by the pitcher that were good enough to hit but the player refused to swing.

Cultural historians have studied the evolution of baseball because it says a lot about we as a people. A wholly democratic game, its popularity exploded during the Civil War when bored soldiers on both sides eagerly adopted it as a fine way to take one’s mind off of army life. The soldiers returned home eager to set up leagues and teams in their own towns and the game’s enduring popularity was assured.

But ever since 1869 when the first professional team laced up the cleats, there has never been a day in the history of baseball like this one. Today, some of baseball’s all time greats who performed feats of strength and skill almost beyond belief are revealed as cheaters, liars, and druggies - Frankenstein monsters who took the easy way to glory by hepping themselves up with performance enhancing substances.

Today is the day that former Senator George Mitchell releases his long awaited report on the use of performance enhancing drugs in baseball. And the game will suffer a huge black eye it will be many years recovering.

Today, I feel like the little kid who, standing at the bottom of the courthouse steps in Chicago after the infamous “Black Sox scandal” trial, tugged on Shoeless Joe Jackson’s coat and looked his hero right in the eye asking, pleading “Say it ain’t so, Joe.” No answer from Jackson that day. Nor do I suspect we’ll hear anything except the canned, PR flak written statements from some of the greatest ballplayers who ever lived. They will apologize for their “mistake.” They will cry when they apologize to their families. They will beg forgiveness from the fans. They will apologize to their teammates for “letting them down.” They will thank the organization for sticking with them. They will promise to be better citizens. They will ask God for help.

It will be like Michael Vick - excuse the expression - on steroids.

We already knew about Barry Bonds and his drug regimen. And everybody figured the former single season home run record holder Mark McGuire had bulked up on “Andro” and other illegal supplements.

But the biggest shock to me was the naming of the greatest right handed pitcher perhaps to ever play the game. Roger Clemens seemed ageless and now we know why. He evidently didn’t start taking steroids until the 1997 season which makes sense; he had a God given ability to throw a fastball 100 mph. Why anyone blessed with the best right arm of his generation would take steroids will remain a mystery to me.

Then there’s one of the game’s good guys. Andy Pettite was a fine left handed pitcher but took human growth hormone to recover from injury faster. One of the acknowledged gentlemen of the game, Pettite’s brilliant record with the Yankees will now be tarnished forever.

All-star Miguel Tejada - traded today from Baltimore to Houston - also proved to be a cheat. Another ballplayer with great natural ability too lazy to do the hard work necessary to make himself a better player and instead, took the shortcut to fame and riches by juicing up.

Gary Sheffield whose best years were with the Marlins and Braves and was an All-Star with the Yankees for three straight seasons showed up on the list. One of the great clutch hitters of this generation, Sheffield was another surprise for me.

Jason Giambi, the only player named in the report to own up to his steroid use publicly was on the list. It is not known whether he named any names when he met with Mitchell last year.

Eric Gagne was named. With the Dodgers, he was damn near unhittable as a closer for a year and a half. Hitters couldn’t solve his slider but Mitchell did.

The list of active players continued with names like Toronto’s excellent hitter Troy Glaus, talented outfielder Jose Guillen, former pitcher now outfielder for St. Louis Steve Ankiel, And Gary Matthews, Jr. Mitchell’s list contains 50 names of present and former Major Leaguers.

Among the former players of note; Mo Vaughn - a great slugger, Rafael Palmeiro - Hall of Fame numbers, Chuck Knoblauch and Lenny Dykstra - hard nosed sparkplugs, sweet swinging David Justice, and catcher Benito Santiago - a man with the best arm in baseball for many years.

When I was a young boy, my friends and I lived, breathed, slept, and ate baseball. We played it constantly from the time the snow melted until the time it covered the ground again. We collected baseball cards. We argued about it. We defended our favorites. We got into fights over who had the best throwing arm or the best curveball.

I know the days when kids immersed themselves like that in the game are gone - a product of over saturation of the game on TV as well as a cynicism about the multi-millionaire players that is foreign to me. Perhaps we were too eager to believe in the infallibility of our heroes. Perhaps we lived in a different age that saw baseball and through the game, America, as virgin pure - unsullied by any of the dark and dirty forces that other aspects of life were subject to.

Scandals took place out of the sports pages back in those days. We had no reason to believe that many of the giants of the game actually had feet of clay, that they were as imperfect and flawed as any adult we came in contact with. To us, ballplayers were almost like Gods and we were only too happy to worship them.

Non-baseball fans will forgive me if I feel enormously saddened today. Not on the verge of tears but rather an empty feeling inside as if my guts had been hollowed out with a spoon. Perhaps that little boy in me feels finally and bitterly betrayed by those I still admired for their athleticism and grace.

That’s gone now. And I know I’ll be a poorer man for it.

UPDATE: 12/14

Michelle Malkin (”not a baseball fan” - a character flaw for which she is forgiven) nevertheless covers the “Freak Show” as well as a statement by baseball writers begging the owners to get tough on steroids.

When the Warren Commission, looking into the JFK assassination, got around to examining the role played by the city of Dallas in the tragedy, the members were torn between issuing a blanket condemnation of the rank hatred directed against Kennedy (and the American government) that many of them felt enabled the killer or a wrist slap that would have only mentioned the atmosphere in the city as “a factor” in the tragedy that played out that awful day.

Indeed, there was no more hate filled city that autumn in America than Dallas, Texas. Charges of treason against Kennedy and many in the government were on many people’s lips - the result of a series of editorials personally written by Ted Dealey, publisher of the Dallas Morning News, in which he regularly referred to the President and members of his administration as “traitors.” On the day of the assassination, the News carried a full page ad with a head shot of the president framed as if on a wanted poster. In large, bold type, the headline read “Wanted for Treason” and then listed a dozen or so ridiculous to our eyes reasons why Kennedy was a traitor.

But it wasn’t only Dealey who was spreading hate. The John Birch Society was very strong in Dallas as was the Klan. Many residents report hearing blood curdling threats made by ordinary citizens in schools, coffee shops, and other places where people would gather. If you lived in Dallas at that time, there was no way you could avoid being exposed to the searing hatred directed against Kennedy. He was a commie appeaser (or a commie plant). His entire cabinet was “pink.” He was a race mixer, a skinny rich kid whose daddy bought him the office.

This was the atmosphere Lee Oswald was exposed to in the days and weeks leading up to the assassination. As a declared Marxist - despite personal writings that made it clear he had little idea of what that ideology meant - he saw himself in heroic terms; a lone crusader against the evils of capitalism. For Oswald, there was little difference between Kennedy and the right wing racists and McCarthyites who spewed hatred toward liberals, toward the government, toward the “eastern establishment.”

But the Warren Commissioners were in a quandary. How much blame should be assigned to this right wing city for the actions of a declared leftist? The FBI tried to explain to the Commission that Oswald’s personality was very susceptible to this kind of virulent, visible hatred and that he could have channelled it unconsciously so that it enabled his act of violence. And it played in to Oswald’s ultimate motivation; it gave a patina of justification for what was really just a ploy to get the attention he craved so much.

In the end, the Commission cited Dallas and the climate of hate as a contributing factor but stopped short of blaming the city for enabling the tragedy.

No such reticence animated Bill Clinton when it came to placing blame for the Oklahoma City bombing. Although Clinton talked in general terms about the anti-government hatred spewed by militias and some far right websites, he went too far when accusing talk radio of enabling the killers:

“We hear so many loud and angry voices in America today,” Mr. Clinton told a college group in Minneapolis, after an obligatory obeisance to free speech, “whose sole goal seems to be to try to keep some people as paranoid as possible and the rest of us all torn up and upset with each other. They spread hate. They leave the impression, by their very words, that violence is acceptable.”

The impression Mr. Clinton left, by his very words, was that the Oklahoma bombing had been incited by words “regularly said over the airwaves” by his political critics.

“Those of us who do not agree with the purveyors of hatred and division, with the promoters of paranoia,” he urged, “. . . we have our responsibilities, too. . . . When they talk of hatred, we must stand against them. When they talk of violence, we must stand against them.”

Clinton was correct in blaming the vitriol that emanated from publications (McVeigh was a devotee of the racist Turner Diaries), websites and public utterances of the neo-Nazis, the skinheads, and the far right militia movement as a factor that played upon the minds of killers like McVeigh. But he went way to far when including talk radio in his diatribe against hateful rhetoric. Nevertheless, it was once again shown how an atmosphere of hate with dark hints of violence enables disturbed people like McVeigh and gives them psychological comfort when carrying out their heinous acts.

Last Sunday, a similarly disturbed young man walked into a missionary school in Arvada, Colorado and gunned down 4 people, killing two of them. Less than 12 hours later, he had driven 65 miles to the New Life Church in Colorado Springs and opened fire with a rifle, killing two and wounding three before a courageous security guard ended his spree and forced the gunman to turn his weapon on himself. With a satchel full of ammo and a couple of other guns, who knows how many people Matthew Murray would have killed if not stopped.

Some of the time between the two shooting sprees Murray apparently spent on the internet. On a website devoted to people who have left formal religion behind, he wrote an incoherent screed - virtually the same words used by Columbine killer Eric Harris - and substituted the word “Christian” for the name of Harris’ target:

I’m coming for EVERYONE soon and I WILL be armed to the @#%$ teeth and I WILL shoot to kill. ….God, I can’t wait till I can kill you people. Feel noremorse, no sense of shame, I don’t care if I live or die in the shoot-out. All I want to do is kill and injure as many of you … as I can especially Christians who are to blame for most of the problems in the world.

Well all you people out there can just kiss my (expletive removed) and die. From now on I don’t give a @#%$ about what all you (expletive removed) have to say, unless I respect you which is highly unlikely, but for those of you who do happen to know me and know that I respect you, may peace be with you and don’t be in my line of fire, for the rest of you, you all better @#%$ hide in your houses because I’m coming for EVERYONE soon, and I WILL be armed to the @#%$ teeth, and I WILL shoot to kill and I WILL @#%$ KILL EVERYTHING! No I am not crazy, crazy is just a word, to me it has no meaning, everyone is different, but most of you @#%$ heads out there in society, going to your everyday @#%$ jobs and doing your everyday routine (expletive removed) things, I say @#%$ you and die, if you got a problem with my thoughts, come to me and I’ll kill you, because……..God (expletive removed), DEAD PEOPLE DON’T ARGUE! My belief is that if I say something, it goes. I am the law. If you don’t like it, you die. If I don’t like you or I don’t like what you want me to do, then you die. If I do something incorrect, oh @#%$ well, you die. Dead people can’t do many things, like argue, whine, @#%$, complain, name, rat out, criticize, or even @#%$ talk. So that’s the only way to solve arguments with all you (expletive removed) out there, I just kill. God I can’t wait till I can kill you people, I’ll just go to some downtown area in some big city and blow up and shoot everything I can.

You break my back but you won’t break me…..all is black but I still see…shut me down, knock me to the floor…..shoot me up, @#%$ me like a whore….trapped under ice, comfortably cold, I’ve gone as low as you can go….. feel no remorse, no sorrow or shame……time’s gonna wash away all pain I made a God out of blood not superiority I killed the king of deceit and now I sleep in anarchy.

Note two things; Murray “didn’t care” whether he lived or died and it is clear he relished the “power” such an act would bestow. But it was his obvious hatred of Christians that ultimately gave him his target.

As an atheist, I am not as sensitive to the slights and insults hurled at Christians by some on the left. What I might find irreverent, Christians may take as an insult or hate speech.

Regardless, there is little doubt that some on the left cross the line of irreverence and play to their basest instincts by railing against the “fundies” and “Christofascists” whose beliefs they find objectionable. This is not true of all liberals, many of whom have expressed their concerns about fundamentalist Christians becoming too involved in the political life of the nation in respectful terms. But there is no doubt that a popular fringe on the left glories in using stupefyingly hateful language to describe their opposition to Christian positions on abortion, gay rights, birth control, even railing against organized religion itself.

Many times these rants cross the line and enter the realm of hate speech. The Amanda Marcotte affair and her ludicrous, hateful diatribes against Catholic beliefs is but one example of this mindset on the left that fails to differentiate between argument and vicious, hate-filled screeds.

Even more widespread but subtle by comparison is the anti-Christian bias found in mass media. It was much worse just a few years ago when it was impossible to find anyone of faith portrayed in a positive light on television or the movies. Christians - especially devout Christians - were portrayed as hypocrites and most often, criminals. David Limbaugh chronicled this bias in Persecution: How Liberals Are Waging War Against Christianity. I disagree with Limbaugh that there is something in the liberal ideology that manifests itself as hatred toward Christians - especially in mass media. It truly is a matter of not understanding people of faith as well as a distrust of anyone who believes in anything so strongly. The cynics who control the airwaves and movie studios simply cannot grasp the idea of the true believer. Hence, patriots, Christians, and zealots of every stripe are portrayed in a negative light.

Recently, this bias has been tempered by a slew of shows that portray faith and people who practice it in a more positive way. The long running show 7th Heaven, which showed the life of a preacher and his children, inspired a host of shows that also take faith seriously and attempt to examine an individual’s relationship with God in a positive light.

But fundamentalist Christians are still the target of an insidious bias in the news media as well as Hollywood. And the question that must be asked in the wake of the Colorado church shootings is does all this create an atmosphere of permissiveness that enabled the shooter?

Church shootings are nothing new in America although these kinds of mass killings is a fairly recent phenomena. Here are some major attacks at churches over the last few years:

May 21, 2006: Four members of Erica Bell’s family are shot to death in a service at the Ministry of Jesus Christ in Baton Rouge, La. She is abducted and murdered elsewhere. Her husband Anthony Bell is currently awaiting trial.

Feb. 26, 2006: Kevin L. Collins opens fire during a church service at Zion Hope Missionary Baptist Church in Detroit, killing Rosietta Williams-Culp and injuring a 9-year-old girl. He later killed himself.

March 12, 2005: Terry Ratzmann opens fire at a Living Church of God service held at a Sheraton Hotel in Brookfield, Wis., killing seven and wounding four before shooting himself.

Oct. 5, 2003: Shelia Wilson walks into the Turner Monumental AME Church in Atlanta while preparations are being made for service and shoots the pastor, her mother and then herself.

June 10, 2002: Lloyd Robert Jeffress shoots four monks in a Benedictine monastery in Conception, Mo., killing two and wounding two, before killing himself.

March 12, 2002: Peter Troy, a former mental patient, opens fire during Mass at Our Lady of Peace Catholic Church in Lynbrook, N.Y., killing the priest and a parishioner. He later receives a life sentence.

May 18, 2001: Frederick Radford stands up in the middle of a revival service at Greater Oak Missionary Baptist Church, in Hopkinsville, Ky., and begins shooting at his estranged wife, Nicole Radford, killing her and a woman trying to help her.

Sept. 15, 1999: A gunman opens fire in Wedgwood Baptist Church in Fort Worth, Texas, killing seven people and then himself.

This is only a partial listing and doesn’t include some of the more recent attacks

In many of these incidents, it was alleged that the shooter was animated by anti-Christian hatred, enabled by a society at war with Christians. Is that really true? Given the spate of lawsuits brought by atheists and others who seek to remove Christian symbols and the outward manifestations of Christian beliefs from the public square along with attacks in media and on the internet, is it any wonder that Christians feel themselves besieged? Nor does it take a rocket scientist to figure out that this overpowering media blitz that appears on the surface to assault Christian leaders and beliefs would affect those already predisposed to hate and perhaps give them the subconscious impetus to act out that hatred by picking up a gun and using it on their perceived enemies?

This is very tricky territory to explore and some of my more feeble minded readers will try and take me to task for blaming liberals for the Colorado shootings. Nothing could be further from the truth. But to deny that the over the top rhetoric used by non believers along with the portrayal of Christians in mass media as hypocritical and evil has some kind of effect on these unbalanced killers - the Oswalds and McVeighs of today - is just not logical.

I confess to sharing many concerns about the Christian right that the sane left has articulated. But a blind man can see where the white hot rhetoric and constant debasement of Christians and Christianity in the media can lead. And perhaps it’s time for those on the left who care about the subject to step forward and ask for a bit more tolerance from their brethren despite the fact that they would be defending some whose own intolerance might ordinarily give them pause.

If there is a “war” some kind of peace is definitely in order. And understanding by all sides of the real world consequences that are the result of hate speech should be the first priority.

Lefty blogs are all over the story involving a gay escort who it was reported had a sexual relationship with Trent Lott and that this was the real reason he was resigning.

The only problem is, the story is categorically false. This from the escort in question:

It looks like a Washington DC-based blog called BigHeadDC is making claim that there was (or, is) a working relationship between myself and Senator Trent Lott. There are falsely pieced-together quotes that serve no purpose other than to sensationalize a completely fabricated scoop.

I will continue to offer a great sense of confidentiality to the people I see. I have not, nor have I ever seen or had contact with Senator Trent Lott. It’s as simple as that. It never happened.

Not surprisingly, wherever there is even a hint of a “sex in Congress” story, out from under the nearest rock crawls Larry Flynt to put his two cents in:

HUSTLER Magazine has received numerous inquiries regarding the involvement of Larry Flynt and HUSTLER in the resignation of Trent Lott. Senator Lott has been the target of an ongoing HUSTLER investigation for some time now, due to confidential information that we have received.

Please note that Flynt does not say he has one scintilla of evidence against Lott - only that he the “target” of an ongoing “investigation.” He confirms nothing of this idiot’s story, despite the blogger’s claims to the contrary.

For Flynt, this is beautiful. He gets to comment on a completely spurious story appearing in some no-name blog and in the process, smear a political enemy without offering one iota of evidence that what appeared on the blog was true.

My liberal friends: This is your First Amendment Champion. Proud of him?

A couple of lefty blogs went with the story - then had to go through a retraction. No problem there since we’ve all had to do that. Of course, the caveats and snide asides probably weren’t necessary:

John Aravosis:

With the past credibility problem of the Trent Lott blogger today, and now the outright blanket denial from the sole source, the same logic applies. I’m just not convinced. I’d love to be convinced, believe me. And trust me, there have been rumors for years about Trent Lott. But until I hear more, you’re not going to read about those rumors here.

Except, we just did read about those scurrilous rumors at your site, John - not that this is anything new. Getting in the gutter to slime people and out them against their will is your M.O. Why should we be surprised?

Suburban Guerrilla

Wide stance? Apparently there’s a good reason why he and Larry Craig are looking so longingly at those microphones. (Keep trying; site’s having trouble handling all the traffic.) The male escort named in the post is denying the whole thing here and here - just keep in mind he’s gone on the record saying he would never out a client, so who knows?

Just keep in mind that the male escort has “gone on record” saying no such thing. He referred vaguely to “confidentiality” for clients. And If Larry Flynt’s million dollar offer can’t entice the escort to make an exception to that rule, it is difficult to imagine the gossip is anything more than a clumsy attempt to smear Lott.

The Group News Blog:

What We Know…

There is no proof Larry Flint has photos of Trent Lott blowing goats behind a Klan rally as a young man.

That is wild speculation.

I also have absolutely no evidence they were black goats.

They don’t even bother with a retraction.

Some enterprising blogger may want to look into how all this started. Did a little birdie whisper in this blogger’s ear? And was that little birdie’s name Larry?

Big Head DC has also received word that Hustler will soon provide more details on why Lott resigned — much more to come. It’s unknown at this point when Flynt will write the $1 million check to Big Head DC.

Funny that Big Head DC has “received word” about Hustler planning to augment this story. Could it be that the blogger is a cats paw for Larry Flynt?

Flynt is no dummy - especially when it comes to libel laws. It is possible that since there is little or no real evidence connecting the gay escort to Lott - perhaps some cloakroom scuttlebutt picked up by a staffer - that Flynt saw a perfect opportunity to get the smear out in the open by leaking it to some eager beaver blogger whose journalistic standards make Weekly World News look like a paragon of reporting virtue.

And now that the smear is out in the open and has received widespread play on blogs, Flynt can write about anything he has on Lott. As long as it’s related to the escort story, he can simply claim he’s commenting on a story already in the public domain.

Any way this came about, it is despicable. Lott’s no paragon of virtue himself but if you’re going to smear someone’s personal life, at least have the common decency to get your facts right.

Fear of those who are different than us - especially those who worship differently than we do - is one of the hallmarks of the truly ignorant. If there was ever an issue in a democracy not to get your panties all in a bunch over it would have to be how someone talks to God; what name they call him, what direction they face when they pray, the funny little hats they wear when speaking to him, or even really, really esoteric differences like whether they believe the Indians are actually the lost tribes of Israel or if someone believes in any of this superstitious nonsense in the first place.

It just doesn’t matter - or it shouldn’t anyway. Of course, in America everything eventually comes down to politics anyway. And while clear majorities of Americans want their president to have definite religious views, even larger majorities don’t want a candidate prattling on and on about them. They support a minister’s right to talk about politics but large majorities do not think religious leaders should be in the business of endorsing candidates. In short, American draw a sharp, distinct line between the private practice of religion and what role it should have in politics; that is, as little as possible.

Except for a large segment of the Republican party, stuck as they are in the 17th century where religious tests for office in England were a matter of routine, the question of where someone comes out on their very own Christian-o-Meter seems to matter a great deal. And the deal is, neither God nor any of the Prophets or disciples or apostles or even Jesus Christ himself defines the issues that determine who is a “good Christian” and who gets piled on for being the devil’s disciple.

The job of deciding what issues make you a good Christian candidate go to people like Pat Robertson or James Dobson or any other highly visible, well heeled TV evangelist who arbitrarily can tell Rudy Giuliani, Fred Thompson, and especially that Mormon apostate Mitt Romney that they are not welcome to sup at the table of the righteous but must beg for scraps and grovel like a dog if they wish any recognition at all.

Now going off as I do here on these “leaders” of the religious right probably has some of the more simpleminded among you believing I am somehow “anti-Christian.” In logic class, we might have simply laughed you out of the room and told you to go home to your mother and come back when you were ready to act and think like an adult. Of course I am not saying anything whatsoever that could be construed as “anti-Christian.” I am however, trying to make a case for kicking the Dobsons, the Robertsons, and their pandering, homophobic, fear mongering clique of insufferably arrogant and self righteous sycophants out of the GOP party hierarchy.

Where they go from there, I could really care less. But to have them determining “litmus test” issues and then actually having the supreme hubris to pass judgement on how well a political candidate adheres to their narrow view of Christian ethics is nothing less than a determination of fealty to one set of religious principles - a “religious test” by any other name.

How many ways is this wrong? How UN-American is this? Evidently, people like Dobson could care less:

I firmly believe that the selection of a president should begin with a recommitment to traditional moral values and beliefs. Those include the sanctity of human life, the institution of marriage, and other inviolable pro-family principles. Only after that determination is made can the acceptability of a nominee be assessed.

The other approach, which I find problematic, is to choose a candidate according to the likelihood of electoral success or failure. Polls don’t measure right and wrong; voting according to the possibility of winning or losing can lead directly to the compromise of one’s principles. In the present political climate, it could result in the abandonment of cherished beliefs that conservative Christians have promoted and defended for decades. Winning the presidential election is vitally important, but not at the expense of what we hold most dear.

Why must it be all or nothing? Practical, reasonable people support the candidate that best reflects their principles but aren’t dogmatic about it. People give different weight to different issues and their judgement about a candidate is reflected in a host of factors - personality, likability, and purely selfish concerns having to do with personal wealth and issues that directly impact the pocketbook.

But all this goes under the bus when Dobson and his crew start waving the bible around and saying people like Fred Thompson are not Christian:

“Everyone knows he’s conservative and has come out strongly for the things that the pro-family movement stands for,” Dobson – considered the most politically powerful evangelical figure in the U.S. – said in a phone call to Dan Gilgoff, senior editor at U.S. News & World Report.

“[But] I don’t think he’s a Christian. At least that’s my impression.”

Dobson then issued a “clarification” that was, if anything, more egregiously intolerant than his original remarks about Thompson:

“In his conversation with Mr. Gilgoff, Dr. Dobson was attempting to highlight that to the best of his knowledge, Sen. Thompson hadn’t clearly communicated his religious faith, and many evangelical Christians might find this a barrier to supporting him.

“Dr. Dobson told Mr. Gilgoff he had never met Sen. Thompson and wasn’t certain that his understanding of the former senator’s religious convictions was accurate. Unfortunately, these qualifiers weren’t reported by Mr. Gilgoff. We were, however, pleased to learn from his spokesperson that Sen. Thompson professes to be a believer.

Is one’s support or opposition to Roe v Wade a “religious conviction?” Are we not content with thrusting God into the political fray but must now bring Him into the Courts as well?

It is just as well. Dobson got his comeuppance from Thompson during an interview with Sean Hannity last night:

Host Sean Hannity asked Thompson about Dobson, who has attacked Thompson and made it clear he would not support a Thompson candidacy. “Don’t read too much into the Dobson thing,” Thompson told Hannity, continuing:

A gentleman who has never met me, who has never talked to me, I’ve never talked to him on the phone. I did have one of his aides call me up and kind of apologize, the first time he attacked me and said I wasn’t a Christian…

I don’t know the gentleman. I do know that I have a lot of people who are of strong faith and are involved in the same organizations that he is in, that I’ve met with, Jeri and I both have met with, and I like to think that we have some strong friendships and support there…

Hannity then asked: “Would you want to have a conversation with Dr. Dobson? Do you think that might help?”

I have no idea. I don’t particularly care to have a conversation with him. If he wants to call up and apologize again, that’s ok with me. But I’m not going to dance to anybody’s tune.

Good for Fred. Unfortunately, in the current GOP party structure, not dancing to Dobson’s tune isn’t likely to get you very far. I may be wrong about him, but Thompson seems to me to be just the sort of person we need as President. When he says that he “won’t dance to anybody’s tune,” you get the impression that goes not only for Dobson but other special interests as well. Coupled with his genuine conservative stands on many issues, he is becoming more and more attractive to me every day, although I wouldn’t commit to him yet.

Contrast Thompson’s rhetoric with that of John McCain. Mired in 4th place in most polls, McCain is evidently trying to “Out-Christian” all the other candidates by opining that first he wouldn’t vote for a Muslim for President unless he could be sure of his loyalty to the United States and then topping that idiocy by saying “no thanks” to Mitt Romney by averring (in all seriousness) that The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints may not be a Christian sect:

John McCain’s remarks about America being founded in the Constitution as a Christian nation have opened him up to getting a lot more questions about his religion — and the religions of other candidates.

At a meeting with the Spartanburg Herald-Journal editorial board, McCain was asked whether Mormons are Christians — a serious issue with many evangelicals, and a potential pitfall for Mitt Romney.

“I don’t know. I respect their faith. I’ve never frankly looked at the Mormon religion. I’ve known a lot of Mormons who are wonderful people,” McCain said.

To be fair, McCain went on to say that he didn’t believe Romney’s Mormonism should be held against him. But isn’t that kind of like saying “The fact that my opponent has molested children in the past should have no bearing on this race…?” Magnanimous but a little hypocritical at the same time.

Where all this religiosity in the GOP is leading is as plain as the nose on your face; total, unmitigated defeat. A rout. A bloodbath. Republicans are not going to get 18 million evangelical Christians out to vote for any of the current top tier candidates for President. That’s the number that voted for George Bush in 2004 and arguably supplied his margin of victory over John Kerry. And the difference between 2004 and 2008 is that there will be a sizable chunk of voters who leave the GOP because of this pandering to the religious right and their extremist, narrow, moralistic, issues.

So not only will Republicans see a reduced evangelical vote but if you couple that with people who have abandoned the party in disgust for one reason or another, you have the makings of a truly historic defeat for the GOP.

But don’t worry. If such a defeat were to happen, the Dobsons and their apologists would simply chalk it up to not nominating a candidate who was “pure” enough on those vital issues of gay marriage or some other cultural issue that most Americans place far down their list of priorities. So they will continue to fool themselves into thinking that it doesn’t matter that nobody cares about their issues as long as they are “true to principle.”

Tough to stand on principle when you’re stuck in the political hinterlands and nobody is listening to you.

UPDATE: RIGHT ON CUE

The GOP must have known I was going to highlight their slavish devotion to their evangelical base today.

Nearly 20% of the Republican caucus voted “present” on a resolution commending the country’s attention to the Muslim holiday of Ramadan:

The resolution recognized “the Islamic faith as one of the great religions of the world,” rejected “hatred, bigotry and violence directed against Muslims, both in the United States and worldwide” and “[commended] Muslims in the United States and across the globe who have privately and publicly rejected interpretations and movements of Islam that justify and encourage hatred, violence and terror.”

Rep. Tom Tancredo (R-Colo.) dismissed the resolution as political correctness gone too far.

“This resolution is an example of the degree to which political correctness has captured the political and media elite in this country,” Tancredo said. “I am not opposed to commending any religion for their faith. The problem is that any attempt to do so for Jews or Christians is immediately condemned as ‘breaching’ the non-existent line between church and state by the same elite.”

Of course, the fact that voting for this resolution would have made many of your evangelical supporters upset didn’t have a thing to do with it, eh Tom? Can’t refer to Islam as “one of the world’s great religions” without raising worries that before you know it, there will be a Koran in every Congressman’s office.

UPDATE II

Allah has a some prescient thoughts on Dobson and Rudy:

While he was writing this, the archbishop of St. Louis, Raymond Burke, was telling the hometown paper that he’d deny communion to Rudy over his pro-choice stand, a logical extension of the rumblings from the Vatican earlier this year about Catholic politicians whose wall between church and state is a little too high. Burke is no face in the crowd. According to the Post-Dispatch, he’s respected as one of the Church’s most brilliant legal minds and apparently authored a paper last year arguing that if a wayward Catholic politician had been formally warned not to receive communion, it would be a mortal sin for any priest or eucharistic minister to give it to them.

The more the religious establishment lines up against him, the more Rudy becomes the protest choice for conservatives who think the religious right has too much sway over the party. I’ve got to admit, for all the grief I give him, I’m starting to lean towards Rudy myself.

I have numerous other problems with Rudy but his stand on social issues isn’t part of them. What I’ve read from many who have served with him makes me think that a Rudy White House would be a very interesting place indeed. He’s a man who engenders loyalty but also fear - something I’m not sure is a good thing in a president. And then there’s the experience factor. Do we really want to hand the modern presidency off to a man whose highest office achieved was Mayor of a big city?

I don’t know which is why I’m so up in the air about who to support.