SCOTUS Sums Up This Entire Administration

SCOTUS struck another blow to the separation of Church and State, finding, in the case of Hein vs. Freedom From Religion Foundation, that taxpayers lack standing to challenge expenditures and activities of President Bush's Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives. The court ruled 5-4 (Roberts, Alito, Scalia, Kennedy, Thomas) with the Majority Opinion being written by Justice Alito.

It's not surprising, but it's certainly disappointing. In the dissenting opinion, Justice Souter wrote (I assume) without irony

I see no basis for this distinction in either logic or precedent....

Ironically, this can be said for 99.75% of all decisions made by this mad administration.

More reaction and analysis:
Law.com
WaPo

Quote of the Day

With or without religion, you would have good people doing good things and evil people doing evil things. But for good people to do evil things, that takes religion.
---Steven Weinberg

I don't agree. Evil people use religion to try to convince others that the evil things that they are doing are good things.
Afterall, they are doing these things because God has spoken to them. How could that be evil?

I'm In; I'm Out; I'm In; I'm Out

Two weeks ago, the Christian Civic League announced that they were turning their attentions to something other than sex:

The League's Board of Director's decided recently to make defeating this gambling expansion referendum its top priority until November. This is the first time since 1994 that this Christian ministry has allowed her deep concerns over sexual morality to drop from its top priority ranking.

Seemed like a reasonable redirection of focus--gambling's something most folks can agree to hate, especially in Maine. Neon lights and the ding-ping of the slots just doesn't reinforce the state motto. And besides, most folks in Maine are getting tired of the CCL's constant bleating about the "homosexual agenda"and its non-existent threat to "family values" so they stopped listening to the daily bleat. Like the neighbors say, "Live Free or Die".

How quickly good intentions are abandoned. Less than two weeks later, Mike Heath and his League are back on the sex band wagon. Today's press release about a state other than Maine (the Commonwealth of Massachusetts) declares

And the truth is that homosexuality is perverse, deviant and disgusting sexual behavior that isn't a topic of discussion in polite and civil societies. If people want to do it in the privacy of their home then shame on them, but I'm not interested in stopping their boorish bedroom antics anymore than I'm interested in hearing about it."

Idunnomike. It sounds like you really are interested in stopping their boorish bedroom antics, even though you said you were going to stop obsessing about "their boorish bedroom antics" . Either that or you're just hateful.

Pam is blogging this, as is Good As You.

Update: I'd be totally remiss not to link to Peter LaBarbera's thoughts on the matter
It's scary that MassResistance, Mike Heath (in his podcast today) and Americans For Truth all place the blame for this loss--their view, not mine--on compromise.
What's that quote?
"To argue with a person who has renounced the use of reason is like administering medicine to the dead."
----Thomas Paine

Faith, Reason and Illogical Thoughts

Yesterday, Sam Brownback contributed an OpEd piece to the New York Times, in which he argued that he was for Science and Evolution. Sort of. Excepting where science creates a conflict with his faith; then faith wins out. Sigh.

More of the same from the Christianists: a position that echoes the current administration's positions (think Global Warming and Birth Control) and that has seemingly little intelligence guiding it.

Today, the Times published eight thoughtful responses to Senator Brownback. As one writer said:

By subjecting scientific observation to a theological litmus test, he drives the very wedge between faith and reason that he purports to avoid.
As a scientist, I would say that God is much more subtle than to force us to close our eyes to what we see in deference to what another may choose to believe is his guiding hand.

Amen, brother.

Slippery Slope

Andrew Sullivan has yet another money post on this administration's 'interrogation methods' in which he points out that the methods used are not new. I'm not going to excerpt it, but I'll leave you with the money quote:

Once you start torturing, it has a life of its own.

Please do read it in its entirety. And remember, Bush and Rumsfeld didn't coin the phrase 'enhanced interrogation'. The Gestapo did.

The Land of the Lost

In addition to The Taft Museum (where you can see Rembrandts and Sargeants), The National Underground Railroad Freedom Center and The Behringer-Crawford Museum of Natural History, the greater Cincinnati area adds a new museum to its list of places to visit.

The Creation Museum, conveniently located near the airport and the interstate system, opens its doors today. There, a visitor will see a literal six day creation of the earth, learn that this planet is only 6,000 years old and see dinosaurs co-exist with humans.

In the years since the Freedom Center has opened, this museum dedicated to tolerance education, freedom and (you guessed it) the history of the Underground Railroad, has struggled financially. There are fewer visitors than planned for and the endowment money is less than hoped for.

In this era when three Republican candidates for President (Brownback, Tancredo and Huckabee) don't believe in evolution, I'm guessing the $27 million Creation Museum won't struggle to make money or lack for visitors.

The Christian Post has an excellent, unbiased article that details the inherent challenges presented in the book of Genesis for Fundamental Christians--if you don't believe that the earth is 6,000 years old and you don't believe that God created it in six 24 hour days, then you've undermined Biblical Authority--and for those Christians who believe in evolution.

It's what makes the extreme Christian Right so very scary: their faith leaves no room for doubt, for questions, for debate, for growth. To think that if one does not believe that God created the earth in six 24 hour days, the rest of the Bible is invalidated seems to be the antithesis of faith. Doesn't it take much more faith to view Genesis as a beautifully written book about the incomprehensible power and majesty of God than a book that answers every question about how we all got here?

Or as, as Francis S. Collins asks in the Christian Post article, “Could God actually be threatened by what our puny minds are learning about the beautiful complexity of His creation?"

The article goes on to quote Creation Museum Founder Ken Ham (you might remember him from Alexandra Pelosi's documentary) saying "“Maybe there’s someone out there – but I haven’t met anybody yet – who because we told them to believe the six literal days and believe what the Bible has written, has left Christianity."

Well Ken, I guess I'd best get over to that museum and introduce myself.

Like my granddaddy used to say, "Religion is man made and faith is God made." What is important is knowing the Grace of God through Jesus Christ, not undermining science and causing harm in the name of faith.

In this time, it is very difficult to see Christianity as an instrument of kindness, goodness, generosity and charity, as a religion that practices what Jesus instructed us to practice. My own personal beliefs have been sorely strained by our current Christianist President, his Christianist minions, and the Christian Right-- those who would deny science, who seem to have all the answers, who by their actions indicate that other religions are a threat to their faith, and, who are remarkably intolerant, who seem to have no trouble lying or equivocating, as long as they do it because God has put it in their hearts.

Ken, I count myself as one who has left "Christianity"--but not my faith--due in no small part to the Creationists' denial of science and your efforts to force me to believe a literal interpretation of Genesis.

Schadenfreude

It couldn't happen to a nicer person......
Meanwhile, today on the Hill, Rep. Jean Schmidt (R-Ohio) was seen making a spectacle of herself when the unlucky lawmaker slipped and fell in what we’re told was vomit, in a bathroom in Cannon. (Some nice female dealing with the repercussions of Jason Roe’s going away party by chance?) “She made THE biggest scene in the hallway,” says a staffer who escaped the, um, regurgitation. “It’s literally all down her back.”

There's a reason she's called Mean Jean and it's not just because she called John Murtha a coward....

Is Dobson Really Losing His Power?

The Economist seems to think so.....

The problem is that Mr Dobson is not all that good at politics. He
displays all the characteristic weaknesses of evangelical
politicos—overreaching hopelessly and then blaming failure on want of
political courage. He was the prime force behind both the fight to keep
Terri Schiavo’s feeding tube in place and the push for a gay-marriage
ban. But a majority of evangelicals disapproved of the first and a
large number of his fellow social conservatives warned, rightly, that
the second was a waste of effort.





I myself, think rumors of the Religious Right's declining power are wishful thinking and grossly overstated.

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The Face of This War

Anytime you hear a war apoligist say that only 2,000 A-mur-i-can lives have been sacrificed in this war against terror, remember this face. 70,000 Iraqi civilians and 184,000 wounded American patriots must be counted. And before we count them, we must give them health care and the help that they deserve.
More here.

Where's the Outrage?

Via Michelle Malkin:

Ann Coulter just finished her riff on Al Gore, tossed out some cute jokes ("You can understand why Hollywood is concerned about global warming. You know what heat does to plastic."), and ended with a cheap one-liner about John Edwards being a "faggot." (Paraphrasing) She said she would refrain from commenting on Edwards because "if you say faggot, you have to go to rehab."

C'mon Michelle, the best you can do is report that you didn't giggle? Where's your righteous indignation? Where's your moral outrage? Where's the HotAir editorial on declining civility caused by liberal values? I guess if she'd been commenting on Obama and substituted the n word, you wouldn't have giggled about that, either.
Oh yea, I forgot. Being black is genetic. Being gay is a choice:

This is what liberals do, hijack and invert the language so that certain views are simply unacceptable and must not be voiced. However, what they can’t do is argue the fact homosexuality is abnormal. Further, for males it is very unhealthy, and as far as societal value, that behavior has zero. But since they can’t argue these facts they must silence you by labeling words “hate speech” and making dissenters from their views as the abnormal ones when in reality the opposite is true.

My bad. Thank god folks like you and The Ace are protecting us from the decline in Family Values and Civility.

This Is Wrong On So Many Levels

While James Dobson and Rick Santorum and others on the Christian Right are so very, very busy defending "family values" from the "sodomites" and Darwinists, the administration that they support (and were once a part of--sorry about that resounding defeat in the last election, Rick) has overseen the slide of the welfare of our children to the lowest of the 21 rich countries surveyed by UNICEF.

While the Christian Right obsesses about the attack on Christian values (as evidenced by Mary Cheney's pregnancy), a 12-year old Maryland boy dies of a toothache. The bacteria from the abcess in his tooth invaded his brain. After almost $250,000 in emergency hospital care, Deamonte Driver passed away on Sunday. His death could have been avoided by an $80.00 tooth pulling.

Dr. Dobson, wouldn't some of the $137,848,520 (2004 Focus on the Family revenue) that your ministry makes each year be better spent helping the poor and destitute in our country? Or is Leviticus 18:22 more important than Jesus teaching ("Whatever you do unto the least of these, you do unto me.")?

It's time to take back our country and our values from the so-called Christians and show the rest of the world what Jesus really meant.