Right Wing Nut House

Radio Iowa has the perplexing details on Representative Steve King’s endorsement of Fred Thompson for President.

Let’s just say that King didn’t cover himself in any glory with his announcement:

“So I’m down to, of course, Romney and Thompson and in the end I have to come down on the side of this — who am I most comfortable with on the issues that I believe in….When I se someone who believes in their core….when they make a decision, if they’re where I am philosophically….so after really, I didn’t sleep last night but I come here to the podium to tell you that I have great respect for all the candidates.”

King now veers into a discussion of faith — an apparent reference to Romney’s Mormonism. King suggests no one should be denied the presidency because of their personal faith.

Now, he’s talking about “fire in his belly” and concludes with this, calling his pick, “the person who I believe destiny has called to be the president of the United States. I will be working for…Fred Thompson for president.”

He was questioned about the “fire in the belly” comment.

“I’m kind of an antidote for that,” King said.

After the event, I asked King if he had made up his mind on the spot as he was speaking this morning.

“You have great intuition,” King replied.

Romney’s people must have received some kind of heads up because they were at the press conference in force. A couple of the press in the room - most notably Mark Murray from MSNBC’s First Read - actually reported that Romney had the nod.

And the endorsements keep coming… Congressman Steve King (R), one of Iowa’s most strident critics of illegal immigration and a champion of the state’s rural conservatives, has endorsed Romney.

With a mere 17 days until the Iowa caucuses, King’s endorsement may resonate with conservatives in the western part of the state. King had fostered a close relationship with longshot candidate Tom Tancredo, who shares his strong anti-illegal immigration views. But speculation yesterday was that the much-revered (in some circles) congressman wanted to make a splash by endorsing one of the race’s front-runners.

King’s endorsement of Romney could serve to further the Massachusetts governor’s case against Huckabee, whom Team Romney hopes to paint as weak on immigration.

Then, the embarrassing update:

King just announced that he’s supporting Thompson. Team Romney is in the back of the room looking bewildered. They were all here, leading all the press to conclude that it was an endorsement for Romney.

I can’t believe that King made up his mind on the spot as RI reports. That’s got to be a joke, although given the confusion, not a very good one.

So realistically what does this do for Fred in Iowa? For one thing, it maintains the momentum he has enjoyed from the debate (Fred wasn’t expected to get the Des Moines Register endorsement anyway). For another, King has some clout in the western part of the state and among some very influential groups including anti-abortion and anti-illegal immigration interests.

But with 17 days to go and Fred facing an uphill fight to exceed expectations, it may be too little too late. His numbers have barely budged in the Rassmussen daily tracking poll since the debate. But starting today, Thompson begins the kind of retail campaigning that has been lacking in his Iowa and New Hampshire efforts previously. He will start a town by town bus tour from now until the Caucuses on January 3.

This is the kind of thing that voters in New Hampshire and Iowa demand of the candidates. The fact that Thompson has failed to do something similar in New Hampshire explains his dismal showing there - garnering less than 5% in all the polls now. It’s only half a joke when you can say that New Hampshirites won’t consider voting for a candidate unless they’ve shaken his hand at least twice. Iowans aren’t quite as bad but also revel in the attention of the candidates.

Right now unless lightening strikes the race and things go topsy-turvy, it appears that Fred has an excellent chance of finishing 3rd in Iowa and no higher. As much as I’d like to see Thompson in the race for a while, I just don’t think that’s going to give him the kind of boost he needs to win in South Carolina and make Florida a competitive venue for him. In short, I think it probable that Fred exits the stage probably immediately after Super Tuesday. He will be out of money and most likely in 4th or even 5th place in the delegate hunt and virtually mathematically eliminated from getting enough delegates to win.

While admittedly much can happen in a month in this race, the comeback kid at this point would appear to be McCain. He has a real shot at winning New Hampshire if he can get the independents and conservative Democrats to cross over and vote for him. And it appears that he is also starting to make a move in South Carolina - home of many active duty military and veterans. Two such victories would probably make him competitive on Super Tuesday - especially in the south and some of the larger states. In short, McCain’s potential delegate haul at this point far exceeds the possibilities for Fred. The arithmetic just isn’t there for the Tennessean.

Fred has got to hope that Romney continues his slide in Iowa and that he can somehow sneak past him for second place. That would be the kind of shocker that could turn his campaign around and give him a boost that would help in fundraising as well as his poll numbers. But he has a huge amount of ground to make up - at least 15 points in most polls - which makes a second place finish unlikely as of today.

Any way it turns out, Fred has done a service to the party by offering his articulated positions on several important issues. They are a good starting point for any candidate if they wish to be taken seriously by conservatives next November.

UPDATE

Malkin thinks that Romney’s Meet the Press performance where he was less than forthright on his immigration flip flops was a determining factor for King:

As I mentioned, Rep. King has been one of the strongest proponents of strict immigration enforcement. Looks like Mitt Romney’s Meet The Press performance yesterday–go back and read his Clintonian answer on amnesty–didn’t help. Like I said yesterday, the endorsement promises to carry much more weight with grass-roots conservatives than the left-leaning Des Moines Register’s.

For your amusement, I offer the following from Digby:

A Democratic president, no matter who it is, is going to pay for the Republicans’ sins. But it won’t be just because the Republicans and Blue Dogs in congress suddenly “realize” they have co-equal power. I predict that the right wing noise machine will shout far and wide that the election was stolen (probably with the help of “illegal aliens.”) The new president will not be allowed to weed out even one right wing plant anywhere in the executive branch without being accused of politicizing it. There will be no executive privilege as the courts rediscover their “responsibilities.” Scientists and experts will all be accused of being shills for the liberal special interests. The president will be accused of violating Americans’ civil liberties and destroying the constitution. There will be widespread accusations of fraud and corruption and non-stop investigations.

A “stolen” election? The 2006 election came and went and not a peep from Republicans or any sane conservative blogger that the election was “stolen.” Republicans, generally acting like adults about most things, don’t engage in the fantastical and uproariously funny conspiracy theories indulged in by our leftist friends about dark doings at Diebold or after midnight vote stealing. Perhaps Digby was projecting.

In fact, that entire paragraph is an amazing summary of exactly what Democrats have done to Republicans over the last 7 years. And what’s more important, it was done for exactly the reason that Digby is accusing the GOP of in his nightmare future; pure, unadulterated politics.

What Digby is worried about is that when the Democratic president exercises the same kind of executive authority used by the Bush Administration, that she is going to have to support it thus making her out to be the rank hypocrite she has always been. In short, on this and all other issues she mentions above, she wants immunity from charges of being a hypocrite just because she has posited this outrageous scenario. Every time a Democratic president does something that Bush was criticized for, you can bet that Digby and her friends will be whining about the Republican noise machine and dark forces arrayed against them while giving that action their unquestioned support.

It’s a “Get out of being called a Hypocrite Card” he wants and she’s not going to get it.

Sorry, it won’t wash. First of all, don’t worry about Republican charges of stealing the election. It ain’t going to be that close. Secondly, the simple act of projecting all these Republican sins and admitting that Democrats will be doing something similar proves that their criticism has been driven by ideology and politics, not concern over “shredding the constitution” or any other nonsense the left has been spouting these last years.

And yes, the “Republican Noise Machine” is going to be in high gear everytime a Democratic president does something that Bush has been raked over the coals for. If I were Digby, I would examine my archives pretty carefully and delete posts that will come back to haunt her after a Democrat is elected president. Just use the criteria she set out above to cleanse the record because sister, you and your compatriot’s feet are going to be held to the fire when it comes to criticisms you have made of this president that you then turn around and praise and support when a Democrat is in power.

Preemptive absolution isn’t going to do you any good. Trust me when I tell you that all of the clever invective you and other liberals have used over the past 7 years to tell us how how close the country is to a dictatorship and how evil the Republicans have been will be thrown in your face whenever a Democrat dares to go beyond the “Greenwald Line” of exercising executive authority.

No deal on hypocrisy immunity. You will be sentenced to experience the next 4-8 years exactly as you fear; one example of sanctimony exposed after another.

UPDATE

Thanks to commenters who pointed out Digby is a woman. Pronouns changed accordingly.

Foreign Affairs magazine has been running a series of essays from the presidential candidates on what their foreign policy goals would be during their administration if they were elected.

I think it significant that Mike Huckabee is one of the last candidates to make an appearance on the august pages of this highly respected magazine. No doubt, the editors were hoping that Huckabee would have seen the utter futility of trying to fool people into thinking that he had thought much about the subject let alone come to any conclusions that wouldn’t reveal himself to be, well, a former governor of Arkansas with as much business being entrusted with the fate of the planet as my pet cat Snowball.

And at least Snowball has the good sense not to stick his nose into things he knows little or nothing about.

This essay is an embarrassment. To aver that Mike Huckabee is unprepared to assume the office of president is to state the obvious. Kevin Drum referred to the Huckster’s thoughts as a combination of “barstool ignorance and internet-email-list credulity.” Indeed, the FA piece reminds me of some conversations I had in taverns when I was a kid, half in the bag, holding forth before an audience of equally soused neophytes as we sought to solve the problems of the world. It was an easy enough task as long as you didn’t know what you were talking about and your views were informed by reading Time Magazine and High Times.

I wonder what Huckabee was smoking when he came up with this:

As president, my goal in the Arab and Muslim worlds will be to calibrate a course between maintaining stability and promoting democracy. It is self-defeating to attempt too much too soon: doing so could mean holding elections that the extremists would win. But it is also self-defeating to do nothing. We must first destroy existing terrorist groups and then attack the underlying conditions that breed them: the lack of basic sanitation, health care, education, jobs, a free press, fair courts — which all translates into a lack of opportunity and hope. The United States’ strategic interests as the world’s most powerful country coincide with its moral obligations as the richest. If we do not do the right thing to improve life in the Muslim world, the terrorists will step in and do the wrong thing.

(Hat Tip: Hot Air)

Good luck and God Bless, President Huckabee. It’s one thing to propose the impossible (” calibrate a course between maintaining stability and promoting democracy”). It is quite another to forget to tell us how we’re going to accomplish it. Holding elections “too soon?” What kind of nonsense is that and what makes Huckabee think we’d have much of a say in when any country holds elections - especially if our army isn’t there to force the issue? Who’s to say it’s “too soon” to hold elections? What criteria do you use to determine such an idiotic policy?

Huckabee refers to US unilateralism in the world today as “arrogant.” What if the rest of the world has an entirely different idea of what constitutes elections held “too soon” than we do? Pretty steep price to pay for not being thought of as “arrogant.”

And I thought we had disabused ourselves of the idea that “underlying conditions” in the Middle East created terrorism. Perhaps someone should remind the candidate that the profile of your average suicide bomber who attacks the west is far from the dirt poor, uneducated rabble who make up most of the region’s citizens. The typical terrorist is most often university educated, comes from families that are relatively well off, and has probably lived for a time in the west.

We will be a long time destroying “existing terrorist groups” - especially since the more we confront them, the more recruits they seem to attract. This is true in Iraq and elsewhere such as the Philippines and Somalia. It would seem to put the Huckster’s attack on “underlying conditions” on hold since he insists on accomplishing the former before tackling the latter.

Contradictions abound in Huckabee’s scribblings. Daniel Drezner found this beaut:

American foreign policy needs to change its tone and attitude, open up, and reach out. The Bush administration’s arrogant bunker mentality has been counterproductive at home and abroad. My administration will recognize that the United States’ main fight today does not pit us against the world but pits the world against the terrorists. At the same time, my administration will never surrender any of our sovereignty, which is why I was the first presidential candidate to oppose ratification of the Law of the Sea Treaty, which would endanger both our national security and our economic interests.

Drezner pulls no punches:

Really, you just have to stand back and marvel at the contradiction of sentiments contained in that paragraph. It’s endemic to the entire essay — for someone who claims he wants to get rid of the bunker mentality, Huckabee offers no concrete ideas for how to do that, and a lot of policies (rejecting the Law of the Sea Treaty, using force in Pakistan, boosting defense spending by 50%) that will ensure anti-Americanism for years to come.

Increase defense spending by 50%? Why? What are you going to spend it on? Huckabee is talking about increasing the defense budget from roughly $500 billion to $750 billion. Did he just pull that 50% number out of thin air?

The increases the Pentagon itself wants amount to around 25% over three years. That includes the ambitious goal of increasing the size of the army by 65,000 and Marine Corps by another 27,000. Most experts believe that any further increase in the size of the army could necessitate a draft - unless standards were lowered further and incentives raised significantly. Just what does Huckabee plan to buy to justify those stupendous increases?

Drezner also points to this bit of sophomoric thinking by Huckabee:

Sun-tzu’s ancient wisdom is relevant today: “Keep your friends close and your enemies closer.” Yet we have not had diplomatic relations with Iran in almost 30 years; the U.S. government usually communicates with the Iranian government through the Swiss embassy in Tehran. When one stops talking to a parent or a friend, differences cannot be resolved and relationships cannot move forward. The same is true for countries. The reestablishment of diplomatic ties will not occur automatically or without the Iranians’ making concessions that serve to create a less hostile relationship.

Perhaps a good beginning would be to ask the Iranians not to order the chant “Death to America” at every mosque in the land after Friday prayers. Then, we could politely inquire as to whether the regime would drop their insistence on “wiping Israel off the map.” Those two “concessions” will never be forthcoming because anti-Americanism and the destruction of Israel are defining characteristics of the regime. It would be like asking the US to give up promoting freedom around the world.

And don’t you love the comparison of our little spat with Iran to that of an arguement with a friend or parent? The difference being, of course, our estranged friend is not likely to be considering the idea of building a nuclear weapon in his backyard. Nor is it likely that a dispute with a parent would end up having our mother sic a suicide bomber on us.

Simple minded sophistry.

If you take the time to read this piece, you will be struck by how much it fails to resemble anything Ronald Reagan, George Bush #41, or any other notable Republican of recent vintage would have come up with. It is a mish mash of unrealistic notions of America’s place in the world along with a cloying appeal to a moralistic international order that doesn’t exist, never existed, and will probably never be realized.

But I’ve nearly given up pointing out Huckabee’s transparent and frightening shortcomings. It’s obvious that nothing in this guy’s past, nothing he says, nothing he stands for will affect his support. He is going to have to be defeated the old fashioned way; one of the other candidates is going to have to appeal to a larger segment of the Republican party than Huckabee. And the question is, by the time that happens - by the time enough candidates have dropped out and it’s a two or three man race - will it be too late to stop Huckabee from getting the nomination?

UPDATE: FROM OUR “OH MY GOD” DEPARTMENT

See-Dubya did a little fact checking and found this gem. Apparently, Huckabee has been communing with Vito Corleone:

At first I read that and thought, Sun Tzu said that? I always thought that quote was from…

But Governor? Foreign Affairs. Policy article. Time to impress the swells. Do a little fact checking.

Time to go to the mattresses, Mikey.

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.

The votes are in from this week’s Watchers Council and the winner in the Council category is “Of Islamist Foxes and British Chickens” by newbie Wolf Howling. Finishing second was “FBI Rebuts CAIR Scare Tactics” by Cheat Seeking Missiles.

Coming out on top in the Non Council category was “Teddy Muhammad” by Pierre Tristam’s Middle East Issues Blog.

If you would like to participate in the weekly Watchers vote, go here and follow instructions.

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.

The 40% of Iowans who self identify as Christian conservatives evidently don’t get out much. Either that, or they’ve simply decided to take an early Christmas holiday from reality. Otherwise, I can’t understand why so many would have fallen so completely for the flim flam being perpetrated by the least knowledgeable, least prepared, and most backward thinking of all the Republican candidates in the field -and that includes candidates going back to the 1950’s.

I am talking about the walking, talking disaster-in-the-making that is Mike Huckabee - former governor of a small, impoverished state, a baptist preacher whose conservative views on social issues make him a perfect candidate for the Leave it to Beaver wing of the GOP, and a man whose thinking is so shallow a warning sign should be plastered on his forehead reading “Absolutely no diving beyond this point.”

Now one might think the best way to get our Iowa brethren to abandon this silly love affair with a silly candidate would not accuse them of being dunces. I disagree. Sometimes, you need to throw a bucket of cold water on people to call their attention to erroneous thinking. And I would think they would find that preferable to the buckets of bullsh*t Huckabee has been tossing their way for months.

Kevin Drum is a liberal Democrat but a keen political observer nevertheless. When I find myself in total agreement with someone from the other side, you’ve got to believe that either some liberal witch has cast a spell on me or we both see the same thing from the empty headed former fatty from Arkansas:

Ross Douthat has more on the fact that Mike Huckabee is basically just making stuff up as he goes along and plainly doesn’t have clue about most of the things he’s asked about. Economic policy? How about a 30% sales tax? Foreign policy? He likes Tom Friedman and Frank Gaffney, two pop commentators with almost nothing in common. Energy policy? Let’s eliminate oil imports by 2017. Immigration policy? Ship everyone back to Mexico. Etc. It’s grade school stuff.

And not to beat this into the ground, but what’s really astounding about this is that nobody actually seems to care much. But eventually somebody will, because eventually this weird combination of barstool ignorance and internet-email-list credulity is bound to produce a howler of the kind that the press likes to latch onto. There’s no telling what it will be, but it’s coming, and when it does the Huckabee boomlet will be over.

Drum didn’t mention health care. Here are the Huckster’s deep thoughts on fulfilling a promise he made yesterday in the debate where he said that by the end of his term as president, all Americans would be covered by health insurance:

I advocate policies that will encourage the private sector to seek innovative ways to bring down costs and improve the free market for health care services. We have to change a system that happily pays $30,000 for a diabetic to have his foot amputated, but won’t pay for the shoes that would save his foot.

We can make health care more affordable by reforming medical liability; adopting electronic record keeping; making health insurance more portable from one job to another; expanding health savings accounts to everyone, not just those with high deductibles; and making health insurance tax deductible for individuals and families as it now is for businesses. Low income families would get tax credits instead of deductions. We don’t need all the government controls that would inevitably come with universal health care. When I’m President, Americans will have more control of their health care options, not less.

Boilerplate mush and about as detailed as a connect-the-dots Santa drawing. Besides, you might note all those nifty tax deductions and tax credits. I wonder how he squares that with his tax policy?

I’d like you to join me at the best “Going Out of Business” sale I can imagine - one held by the Internal Revenue Service. Am I running for president to shut down the federal government? Not exactly. But I am running to completely eliminate all federal income and payroll taxes. And I do mean all - personal federal, corporate federal, gift, estate, capital gains, alternative minimum, Social Security, Medicare, self-employment. All our hours filling out forms, all our payments for help with those forms, all our shopping bags filled with disorganized receipts, all our headaches and heartburn from tax stress will vanish. Instead we will have the FairTax, a simple tax based on wealth. When the FairTax becomes law, it will be like waving a magic wand releasing us from pain and unfairness.

The FairTax will replace the Internal Revenue Code with a consumption tax, like the taxes on retail sales forty-five states and the District of Columbia have now. All of us will get a monthly rebate that will reimburse us for taxes on purchases up to the poverty line, so that we’re not taxed on necessities. That means people below the poverty line won’t be taxed at all. We’ll be taxed on what we decide to buy, not what we happen to earn.

Now I’m no economist or policy wonk or anything but how are we going to give poor folk a tax credit to buy health insurance if there’s no such animal in Governor Huckabee’s brave new Fair Tax world?

Just askin’…

Drum mentioned conservative blogger Ross Douthat who interviewed Huckabee last month and was struck by his unpreparedness for national office:

But when it comes to preparedness, to the hard work of scaling up one’s understanding from state-level challenges to national issues that any aspiring candidate needs to do, Huckabee is way out of his depth. This was my sense talking to him, certainly. Set him off on health care or education or what-have-you in the context of Arkansas politics, and he’s got enough juice to make you think: Here’s a guy who might make a good President. But widen the focus to the nation as a whole, and you’re left thinking: Here’s a smart guy who hasn’t come close to doing his homework. For a charming also-ran with a chance at the Vice-Presidency, that wasn’t a problem. For someone leading in Iowa, it is.

You can’t help but compare the vapid and depthless “policy” ideas extruded from the Huckabee campaign machine with the meaty, thoughtful, and detailed “white papers” issued by the Thompson campaign.

Take Fred’s detailed tax plan that was praised by the Club for Growth and the National Review among other conservative media. In it’s 7 points, Thompson lays out a coherent, conservative plan to cut taxes on individuals and businesses. He couples that with a spending plan that envisions widespread and necessary reform of entitlements along with an end to pork barrel projects. It is a demonstration of muscular - some might even say courageous - thinking that makes Huckabee’s campaign for class president platform look silly by comparison.

By all that is right and fair in the world, Fred Thompson should have enjoyed that surge that Huckabee experienced over the last month. But then, Fred didn’t run around Iowa hinting the Mormonism isn’t really a Christian sect in order to pander to the baser instincts of Christian conservatives. Nor does Fred have the ready charm and unctuous delivery of the sermonizing Huckster. Fred is, well, Fred. He heaves his 6′5″ frame up to speak and delivers it straight from the shoulder - no gimmicks, few wasted words.

And little inspiration, I’m afraid. While yesterday’s debate showed an animated Fred Thompson, even a passionate Fred at times, his claim is on our heads, not our hearts. For some reason, he has not made that personal connection a candidate must make with the voter that marks the difference between a contender and an also-ran. Perhaps he can take these last few weeks before the Caucuses and find a way to reach beyond the intellectual and touch people’s emotions. If he can discover a way to do that, he has a chance to surprise the field.

In the meantime, Huckabee’s obvious failings as a candidate are lost on the voters in Iowa who may actually agree with a statement signed by Huckabee in 1998 contained in a full page ad in USA Today that declared:

“I affirm the statement on the family issued by the 1998 Southern Baptist Convention.” What was in the family statement from the SBC? “A wife is to submit herself graciously to the servant leadership of her husband even as the church willingly submits to the headship of Christ.”

The ad wasn’t just a blanket, “we support the SBC statement,” but rather highlighted details. The ad Huckabee signed specifically said of the SBC family statement: “You are right because you called wives to graciously submit to their husband’s sacrificial leadership.”

That’s 1998 not 1898, by the way.

Nor do many Iowa supporters of this neophyte on foreign policy care that he wants to drop the economic blockade against Cuba (Or at least he did 3 years ago. Where he’ll be on the issue next week is anyone’s guess) and talk to the Iranians (a la Obama). It also doesn’t seem to matter that the guy granted twice as many pardons and clemencies to state prisoners as his three predecessors combined.

As long as Huckabee is right on their issues, he could be revealed as an empty headed lout and still get their support.

A sad state of affairs, indeed.

It is becoming a depressingly familiar story in Lebanon. What looked so promising just a few days ago with leaders on both sides close to an agreement that would have made Army Chief Michel Suleiman President, has now evaporated in a sea of recrimination and a hardening of positions.

And this comes on top of the news that a massive car bomb - so big it nearly destroyed the building near which it was detonated - has killed General Suleiman’s designated successor and 3 others:

“General Francois El Hajj was killed in the blast and several other people were injured, including his driver,” said the source, who did not wish to be identified.

The official said Hajj was tipped to replace the army’s top commander General Michel Suleiman, who is the frontrunner to become Lebanon’s next president but whose election has been blocked by a standoff between the opposition and the ruling majority camps.

“He was a great man, a kind man, who was very intelligent,” the official said, referring to Hajj.

The general, who was on his way to the defence ministry when the blast took place shortly after 7:00 a.m. (0500 GMT), was head of operations in the army.

He gained prominence last summer during a fierce 15-week battle between the army and an Al-Qaeda-inspired Islamist group at a Palestinian refugee camp in northern Lebanon.

That victory over Fatah al-Islam became a source of immense national pride to the Lebanese people. In fact, it was probably the major factor in Suleiman’s rise to prominence as a presidential candidate. That victory convinced the government that the army chief might be able to rise above faction and serve all of Lebanon.

But at the moment, there is stalemate between the Hizbullah led opposition and the government backed March 14th forces. The majority had dropped their opposition to a constitutional amendment that would have waived the stricture against a serving army commander being elected president. Syria, France, and the US had all signed off on Suleiman and it appeared that once an agreement had been reached about the wording of the amendment, Suleiman would be in.

Alas, it seems that Lebanese politicians are afraid of success. They seem to walk up right to the edge of agreement and then, fearful of taking that last step, they retreat back to familiar territory. The opposition has balked at the amendment and has placed so many impossible conditions on its acceptance that both sides are almost back to where they were last summer:

Consensus over the nomination of the Lebanese Armed Forces commander, General Michel Suleiman, for the presidency appeared to have evaporated after constitutional and political obstacles forced a postponement of a scheduled electoral session for the eighth time.

Hizbullah politburo member Hajj Mahmoud Qmati said Aoun would be the opposition’s sole candidate if March 14 does not accede to Aoun’s demands. Qmati, speaking to Tayyar.org, the Web site of Aoun’s free patriotic Movement, on Tuesday, said that to achieve consensus, March 14 must accept a “basket of conditions,” which includes Suleiman as president and agreement on the shape of the new government, a new electoral law and the ministerial statement of the new Cabinet.

“No one item or condition is separate from the other; they are interconnected. So pending consensus, the opposition’s candidate … remains Aoun,” Qmati said. He added that there is no disagreement among the members of the opposition and said that Speaker Nabih Berri remains committed to the opposition’s “broad stance.”

In exchange for allowing Lebanon to have a president, Hizbullah wants to be able to dictate the makeup of the Suleiman government, the sectarian divisions that would be required in future cabinets, plus a new electoral law that would almost guarantee the Shias a majority in parliament.

And they are saying that the March 14th forces are being “obstructionist.”

So the two sides are retreating back to their original positions; March 14th threatening to elect a president anyway by simple majority while the opposition threatens… anything an overactive imagination can come up with including Hizbullah setting up a rival government smack in the middle of Beirut.

All of this is happening with the car bombing as a backdrop. Who done it? Ed Morrissey thinks it’s al-Qaeda because Syria has supported the compromise and the terrorists may wish to foment a civil war where, like cockroaches, they would come exercise power as a result of chaos and anarchy.

Good guess but I disagree. Al-Qaeda may very well have carried out the car bomb attack - anyone’s guess at this point is valid. But I still think the finger points to Syria with a great big assist from the Palestinians.

As popular as General Francois el-Hajj was for his victory over Fatah al-Islam, he was hated and resented by the Palestinians who didn’t take kindly to the Lebanese army going in to one of their refugee camps and literally leveling the place. Nahr al-Abed is a wasteland today thanks to the street battles and house to house fighting that was necessary to root Fatah al-Islam out of their hiding places. The fact that the Palestinians own leaders gave the Lebanese government permission to go into the camp in order to eliminate Fatah al-Islam doesn’t matter.

But why would Syria be behind the bombing? President Assad has apparently signed off on Suleiman as president. But that doesn’t mean he wants Lebanon any less chaotic. Nor does it mean that he necessarily approved of Francois el-Hajj as army chief.

As for who specifically could have the means and opportunity, there are several ultra violent Palestinian groups that are training in Syria right now and who would have the professionalism and technical expertise to carry out such a sophisticated attack. The massive car bomb is reminiscent of the device that killed former Prime Minister Rafiq Hariri - an attack that was planned by Syria and probably executed by Palestinians.

Other, less plausible possibilities is that a violent Sunni or Christian faction carried out the attack. It is believed that el-Hajj actually had political sympathies for the opposition and the blast occured on the two year anniversary of the assassination of publisher and March 14th Member of Parliament Gebran Ghassan Tueni.

But the one overriding factor that fingers Syria is the sophistication and professionalism of the plot. Here is some reaction from Lebanese bloggers:

Tony Bey:

That the target was military is a message to Suleiman in case he had any ideas, but also, a message from Syria to whomever is to replace Suleiman as Army Commander. March 14 is said to have one contender lined up for the job, as part of the compromise over Suleiman. The Syrians just made their point the only way they do: through terrorism.

Mustapha at Beirut Spring:

• The bombing happened a day after another bomb that targeted the symbolic area of Ain Al Rimmaneh , where the Lebanese civil war started.

• While a common way to assassinate politicians, this is the first time an Army figure gets bombed this way.

• Brig. General Hajj holds a sensitive security position and his killing points to a serious security breach by non-amateurs

• The victim was one of the main architects of the Army’s assault on the Naher Al Bared camp.

• The bombing took place one day after the Syrian Vice President said that “Syria is the strongest ever in Lebanon today”

Blacksmiths of Lebanon:

This latest assassination is what it always is: Syria’s use of death, terror, and destruction to try and keep the Lebanese “in line”. Through every opening it receives - the last being France’s overwhelming act of diplomatic buffoonery in Lebanon’s Presidential elections throughout November - the Syrian regime is reinforced in its belief that the international community is unwilling to take serious steps against it, leaving it open to kill, maim, and terrorize the Lebanese.

Hajj’s assassination comes at an important juncture and targets a man who sat atop that juncture: Given the [eventual] ascension of Army Commander, Gen. Michel Suleiman, to the Presidency, Hajj was slated to be a serious contender to the post of Army Commander; And as the Chief of Operations for the Lebanese Army, Hajj played a major role in the military campaign against the Syrian-backed terror group Fatah al Islam at Nahr el Bared.

Taken with the continued drive at the reformation and modernization of the Lebanese Army seen over the last year and half, and the attempted transformation of the institution from just a symbol of sovereignty to an effective a bulwark and tool for implementing it, the above may hint at the Syrians’ choice for a target.

By murdering Hajj, the Syrians may have been sending the message aimed at making sure that none of that transformation is realized, either on the level of the Army or on the level of the Presidency.

From Beirut to the Beltway:

A Lebanese army general tipped to succeed Suleiman as army commander was brutally killed in a car bomb attack today in Baabda. The attack comes less than a day after the Syrian vice president boasted that “no one can win the battle against Syria in Lebanon”, and exactly one year after March 14 MP Gebran Tueni’s assassination.

According to Naharnet, Brig. Gen. Francois el-Hajj was “the chief of military operations of the Lebanese armed forces and a key figure in the army’s victory over Fatah al-Islam terrorists in a 15-week battle earlier this year.”

It is apparent where most Lebanese who support the government stand. But the assassination of General Francois el-Hajj will end up being one more murder mystery that will be addressed by the International Tribunal - if and when it ever begins deliberations.

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.

Join me today from 3:00 - 4:00 PM central time for The Rick Moran Show, live on Blog Talk Radio.

My special guest today is Rich Baehr, National Political Director at The American Thinker. We’ll talk about the state of the race; who’s up, who’s down, and who’s coming on.

If you’d like to call in to the show, here’s the number:

(718) 664-9764

You can stream the broadcast by clicking the button below.

A podcast will be available shortly after the show.

UPDATE

As usual, Rich was brilliant and interesting. You can stream the podcast by clicking the player below. Or you can download it by clicking the button above.