Political Bloviation

Steve Benen on the reaction to studies showing lower pregnancy ‘rates for girls receiving comprehensive sex education and another showing one in four teenage girls has an STD:
Crooks and Liars » Putting abstinence-only funding on the chopping block
House Republicans and Bush administration officials are prepared to fight to keep the funding for ineffective programs in [...]

TAKE ACTION: Your voice is urgently needed to prevent Government from using tax dollars to fund religion

This was an old article that I had never seen before. It has a definite illuminating effect. I read it and thought, “This is what’s wrong with the White House”. The certainty of a true-believer leaves no room for doubt, argument, questions, or has become painfully obvious, facts.
The New York Times > Magazine > In [...]

Greg Laden’s Blog : Texas Official: Call it a “Creationism Degree”
A degree in Creation Science? Other than creation science totally being an oxymoron, how can you teach a science course if you can’t differentiate between the word theory in common usage vs. theory in scientific usage? Then there’s the nasty little fact that obviously [...]

Crooks and Liars » Where do the candidates stand on evolution?
C&L reports that Ron Paul, Tom Tancredo, Sam Brownback and Mike Huckabee all have issues with modern science. Flatly, not believing in science should disqualify anyone from being President. The roll of religion in this election is… disturbing. When candiates are asked about their faith, [...]

One of the better takes on the candidate’s effort to find common cause with Greater Wingnuttia:
The Daily Dish | By Andrew Sullivan
It is eloquent in many parts, stirring in its defense of religious liberty, with only a couple of notes off-key:
Americans tire of those who would jettison their beliefs, even to gain the world.
Ahem. But [...]

Crooks and Liars » Rev. Fred Phelps loses 11 million in lawsuit—cries: “Hogwash!”
I wonder why CNN wanted to give this person airtime? All he did was make an ass out of himself and never even attempted to address any questions in an intelligible way.

The Westboro Baptist hate group Church gets a well deserved comeuppance.
Father Awarded Millions for Funeral Protest - New York Times

Yes, yes she did:
Crooks and Liars » Coulter just wants Jews to be “Perfected”
Inside every Jew there’s Christian just dying to get out? Most Jews I know might be kinda pissed off by the breath taking parochialism of that statement. It would be difficult to formulate something more offensive without resorting to tired stereotypes.
Jews respond.

When the nuns are calling for the impeachment of the “pastor-in-chief” you know he’s really in trouble.
Crooks and Liars » Nuns call for impeachment of Bush/Cheney
“The National Coalition of American Nuns is impelled by conscience to call you to act promptly to impeach President George W. Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney for … high [...]

The Moron Magnet « The Opinion Mill
Best comment:
“Is it possible they could build the museum like a roach motel? If so, I suspect we could trap the remaining 28% of Bush supporters.”
Now that’s a project I could get behind.

Director defends Jesus tomb findings - Today Entertainment - MSNBC.com
No matter what the evidence says Christians will continue to believe. It’s a matter a of faith not acheology, statistics or DNA.  Still it does have some interesting implications.

Hernando: FCAT blessing raises a ruckus
The St. Pete Times report that some school staffers at a middle school anonited the desks with prayer oil in an effort help the students do better on the FCAT test. Would it be wrong to suggest that perhaps studying the material and learning something would be better than asking [...]

MiamiHerald.com | 02/18/2007 | Romney turns on the charm in Florida
Especially the part where he says we need “a person of faith” to lead the country. I’ll take a secular humanist any day over a religious ideologue any day, thank you very much Gov Romney. I’m with Bill Maher on this one, I’d rather not [...]

Pat Robertson: God told me of ‘mass killing’ in 2007 - CNN.com
Was CNN able to verify this story through other sources? There should be a disclaimer to the effect that calls to the Deity requesting verification were not answered. I guess good ol’ Pat has God’s private number. Well, if Pat says it’s true on [...]

Putting Faith Before Politics - New York Times
Daid Kuo points out in this Times guest editorial that the mixture of faith and politics corrupts faith:
C. S. Lewis once warned that any Christian who uses his faith as a means to a political end would corrupt both his faith and the faith writ large. A lot [...]

Evangelical leader hit with gay sex claims - USATODAY.com
What is it with these guys? Is it a combination of latent homosexual feelings and self-loathing that leads them to be closet queers and public gay-bashers?

Columns: Our tax dollars at work funding antiabortion bunk
Blummer has guts. This piece in the St. Pete Times will get the death threats rolling in from “Christians”.
The CPCs’ true purpose is not to serve women in trouble but to proselytize and block women from receiving valid information about their health and options.
Many CPCs like to [...]

Rantings of a Sandmonkey: Boycott Egypt
So far I’d remained quiet on the Danish cartoon controversy. Lots of noise in the blogosphere on it already. But this changes things, if it’s true that an Egyptian daily ran the same cartoons months ago with nary a peep of out rage. Makes it look like an exercise in [...]

WorldNetDaily: Praying through the Bush window
From the WingnutDaily comes one Pastor Jay Stapleton:
Here’s my prayer list: Ginsburg – gone! Stevens, Souter, and Kennedy – gone! Installed in their place: God-fearing, Constitution-loving justices flanking Roberts on both right and left! There are four remaining liberal judges on the nation’s high court. That equates to four justices [...]