If he gets the nomination, it will be a very tight race.

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I remember the morning I had to explain to my traumatized kids why Rosie, our hamster, was eating the litter she just had. “When animals breed too young, they’re prone to eating them,” I said. (Which is true what it said in the hamster book I bought at the pet store.)
And as we know, it [...]

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For some reason, this made me think of you:

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See, it really doesn’t count if it’s not in Baghdad, and it’s “only” women being slaughtered for not following the Islamic rules. See my point?
There are two photographs in every police file. One is a long shot of a woman’s discarded body, the other a close-up of her last expression.
All the women fell foul of [...]

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Fred has some thoughts on the endorsement of Mike Huckabee by Tim LaHaye, author of the “Left Behind” books. I’ll just sit here holding my breath, waiting for a reporter to ask these questions:
LaHaye and his books are ridiculous, but they are not inconsequential. Huckabee’s enthusiastic acceptance of LaHaye’s endorsement requires several follow-up questions that [...]

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You know what? I doubt God is all that pleased with the predictable results of the Bush administration effectively cutting off family planning aid to Africa.
What’s that, you say? It had nothing to do with faith and everything to do with throwing red meat to the GOP’s fundie base? The administration is truly cynical enough [...]

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The very instructive Emo Phillips bit about religious sects:

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You didn’t hear about things like this under Saddam Hussein, who imposed a secular state:
BAGHDAD, Nov 23 (Reuters) - Three suspected al Qaeda militants, including two sisters, beheaded their uncle and his wife, forcing the couple’s children to watch, Iraqi police said on Friday.
The militants considered that school guard Youssef al-Hayali was an infidel because [...]

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Matt Taibbi on Huckabee.

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To me, death is death. When the good Cardinal is just as upset about capital punishment (which is, all too often, the taking of innocent life as later proved by DNA testing), I’ll listen more respectfully to him.
And when the good Cardinal is just as vocal about the inappropriate sex habits of so many of [...]

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This semester I’m taking a survey Western Civ class online, which is better than it sounds - all my lectures are delivered posthumously by the esteemed UCLA historian Eugen Weber and his delightfully rolling r’s. In the one I’m watching just now about the decline of Rome, he says, “…but it does raise the question [...]

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We all want things to be fair, right?
Newt Gingrich’s scheduled speech at Catholic University next week is prompting criticism from students who contend that the appearance would violate the school’s policy barring speakers who have espoused positions contrary to Vatican teachings.
Frank Lankey Jr., 20, political director for the College Democrats, said that Gingrich’s support [...]

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Via Avedon Carol: Is Bush the Anti-Christ?
Granted, Bawer says the right “worships evil,” and has “warped Christianity into something ugly and hateful that has little or nothing to do with love and everything to do with suspicion, superstition, and sadism [and] denies the name of Christianity to followers of Jesus who reject its barbaric theology.” [...]

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Here’s a comprehensive look at the extreme beliefs driving fundamentalist Christian political strategies - you know, like destroying the environment so Jesus will come back even sooner.
Dispensationalists haven’t cornered the market on End-Time interpretation. The reconstructionists (also known as dominionists), a smaller but politically influential sect, put the onus for the Lord’s return not in [...]

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Big debate over at Kos on the legal future of marriage. Most of the gang seems in favor of the European arrangement - a civil ceremony, followed by a religious one.
Makes sense to me. Marriage - sacramental marriage, as it were - is a religious state, defined according to the beliefs of each church.
Now, imagine [...]

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I just read this piece Brad Carson wrote for the New Republic about his failed senatorial campaign in Oklahoma (he was beaten by the wacko who said there were so many lesbians in Oklahoma schools, girls weren’t allowed to go to the bathroom in pairs), and it reminded me of a thought I had.
We really [...]

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Margaret Carlson really slams it to the Catholic Church:
Following a decade during which the bishops squandered much of their authority mishandling their own moral crisis, this would seem the wrong moment for them to go into politics. Their lawyers must have figured out that you can lose your tax-exempt status for endorsing a candidate, but [...]

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Hardball’s on, and they’re talking about the Catholic vote. There’s William “Wingnut” Donohue from the Catholic League and Monsignor Thomas McSweeney, a priest from Erie, PA.
McSweeney said he does a lot of counseling for people who think they may be in trouble with the church if they vote for Kerry. Geeze, didn’t these people learn [...]

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Breslin:
If there is one thing that can make a person seriously unpopular in the Roman Catholic church, it is playing with the gate receipts.
The pastor, Woolsey, isn’t in the papers and on television for more than a day or two when he was thrown out into the secular air. His archdiocese also called the [...]

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Garry Wills on why abortion is too morally complex an issue for the Catholic church to rule upon:
Some, deprived of the Onan text, say that abortion is forbidden by the scriptural commandment “Thou shalt not kill.” But that commandment does not cover all human life. My hair and fingernails, while growing, are alive with my [...]

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Here’s something I wrote last year in response to a news story about the Pope meeting with Tony Blair about the then-impending Iraq war. Apparently the pope screamed so loudly at Blair, it was just shy of an international incident:
Dear PJP2,It was many years ago I left the Catholic church - not with any especially [...]

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Breslin on the Catholic church playing politics:
Beautiful. I think the best thing to come out of the big Catholics in New York, the Powerhouse, St. Patrick’s Cathedral, in many years is the shucking of this cloak that tries to cover their right-wing politics. It never really did. Now they campaign openly as right-wingers in the [...]

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Atrios links to this from Andrew Greeley:
There is currently a discussion among some Catholic bishops about refusing the sacraments to Democratic Sen. John Kerry for not opposing abortion, thus doing the Republican National Committee’s work for it.But the Pope and the national hierarchy also have condemned the death penalty and the war in Iraq. Are [...]

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Some Catholics are pushing the Church to ask why abortion is a bigger priority than the death penalty:
“I’m pro-life in all respects — for the unborn child and the criminal or the elderly person considering euthanasia,” McNeirney said. “I think the church is very consistent in saying that ending human life is something that should [...]

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I’m happy to see the massive turnout in Washington today for the abortion rights march. (I’m always happy to see people exercising their rights as citizens.)
One of the reasons I don’t get all that incensed about this particular issue is, I suspect making abortion illegal will be the single quickest way to a definitive, permanent [...]

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Via Roger Ailes, this from My Left Brain on why Kerry is such a naughty, naughty Catholic, and how resistent he is to the press trying so hard to bring him back to the True Faith. No, not really, but close.
The first article I noticed was carried last month in Time magazine. They all say [...]

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In keeping with the holiday theme:
A church trying to teach about the crucifixion of Jesus performed an Easter show with actors whipping the Easter bunny and breaking eggs, upsetting several parents and young children.
People who attended Saturday’s performance at Glassport’s memorial stadium quoted performers as saying, “There is no Easter bunny,” and described the show [...]

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Well, if we’re going to be fair and balanced, we simply have to run this. (From Mike Signorile via Atrios):
I happen to know that several major news organizations have for some time been looking into claims about portly conservative moralizer William Bennett and a leather-bound dominatrix bodybuilder in Las Vegas, a woman who has some [...]

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Hmm. So maybe Bubble Boy’s religion is a con job, too.
In September 2003, GQ published perhaps the fullest account of Bush’s religious journey, entitled “George W.’s Personal Jesus” by Guy Lawson. The story is a largely sympathetic rendition of Bush’s transformation from a hard-partying oilman to a Christian evangelical who gave up drinking after his [...]

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While Googling the frothy Rick Santorum this morning, I came across this interesting bit from Bear Left! archives:
Until recently, Santorum’s biggest claim to fame was his hypocrisy, fortunately for him a venial sin. In a real-life instance of the quasi-libertarian motto of “I’ve got mine, so [expletive] you,” he has supported a limit of $250,000 [...]

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