by Gary Crooks
The Spokesman-Review

While heading into work on Friday, I saw a small group on the corner of Second Avenue and Lincoln Street waving signs in opposition to Referendum 71, which would give voter approval to the “everything but marriage” law that was adopted by the Legislature last spring. The law grants to registered same-sex couples the same rights and benefits accorded married couples under state statutes.

Normally, I wouldn’t mind such a political display, but among those holding “Protect Children” placards were children themselves. Do you suppose the kids independently researched the topic before deciding they’d be imperiled if discrimination against same-sex couples were brought to an end? More likely, adults shoved the signs into their hands for emotional appeal. Must be that indoctrination I’ve been hearing about.

The use of children in politics has always bugged me, whether it’s the serene family photos on glossy brochures or those oh-so-cute appearances at political rallies. Then there’s the positioning of children near the lectern to dissuade questions about why politicians were sleeping around. But the anti-Referendum 71 example strikes me as particularly odious, because the signs make it seem like the issue is about child predators and one side is all for them.

The logical leap is that a household with a man and a woman is better for child-rearing. There is no firm empirical evidence of this, but even if there were, there are many socioeconomic factors that determine outcomes for children. Divorce and single parenthood matter. So do income, educational level and the age at which people marry.

So where are the campaigns to prohibit marriage (and the rights that go with it) for those who have low incomes or are under 25 years old or don’t have college degrees? Where are the signs protesting the impending marriages of those who tried it before and failed? There aren’t any, and I wonder why. Isn’t this about the kids?

Mixed message. Speaking of protecting children, a justice of the peace in Hammond, La., is making headlines for refusing to sign a marriage license because the couple is biracial. That’s right, Keith Barnwell turned away the couple because of his concern for their yet-to-be-born children. For one thing, he says, mixed-race couples are more apt to get divorced.

Barnwell says he’s not racist, because he has officiated at many marriages involving African-American men and women. But why would he do that when those couples have an above-average divorce rate? Don’t those kids matter?

Maybe we need to pass a law that prohibits adults from using children as an excuse for their bigotry.

You don’t say. It’s interesting how many arguments against gay marriage were first used to defend state laws that barred mixed-race nuptials. Here’s one:

“We aren’t bigoted,” said the backers of anti-miscegenation laws. “We just worry, what will happen to the children? They’ll be taunted and teased.”

It’s like telling a shoe salesman that size matters. Minorities don’t need a heads-up on the possibilities of bigotry. Neither do gays and lesbians. It’s a truth that’s self-evident.

Follow the balloon. A nation is transfixed. What is it? What keeps it aloft? How high will it go? What if it crashes? What if there’s too much inflation or sudden deflation? What if rescuers can’t get there in time? What if there’s no way to bail out? Who built it? Who approved it? Who could think it would ever be safe?

But enough about the economy, how about that balloon boy?

Smart Bombs is written by Associate Editor Gary Crooks and appears Wednesdays and Sundays on the Opinion page. Crooks can be reached at garyc@spokesman.com or at (509) 459-5026.

by Cal Thomas

“War will continue until the end …” (Daniel 9:26)

Like the Pulitzer Prize for journalism, along with the Oscar and Emmy for film and television, the Nobel Peace Prize is an inside job in which liberal, wishful-thinking humanists give awards to each other.

For all I care, the Nobel Committee could have given their useless (except for the money) prize to Homer Simpson. Like President Barack Obama, Homer has done nothing to earn it, though he may be the only character who has been on TV more than the president.

According to the Web site www.globalsecurity.org, there are currently “42 active conflicts and/or wars in the world today.” Not all are shooting wars at the moment and there are several civil wars and conflicts between Israel and various terrorist groups, but 42 wars is a lot of war.

Peace generally occurs when aggressive evil is defeated, which is why Germany and Japan no longer war with the United States. The Nobel Committee apparently believes that by diplomatically singing “All we are saying is give peace a chance,” evil people will study war no more and be so impressed by our intentions they will lay down their arms.

Iran’s President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad could win the Nobel Peace Prize in an instant if he announced his god had told him not to eradicate Israel, or usher in Armageddon. But Ahmadinejad won’t, because he is evil and must be defeated. Neither will he respond to negotiations or sanctions. Same with Osama bin Laden. The United Nations would welcome him as a speaker and the Nobel Committee would award him their top prize if he would announce he no longer believes in terrorism and has become a follower of the Dalai Lama or some other “acceptable” pseudo-deity. He also will do no such thing because he is evil and must be defeated.

The Nobel Committee believes George W. Bush is evil, but apparently not bin Laden or Ahmadinejad. It cringes at leaders who wish to overcome evil by force rather than have the forces of evil overcome them. The Nobel Committee hates Israel, too. And this is because its members, and like-minded male wimps around the world, idolize Michael J. Fox instead of John Wayne and find their role models in the liberal ladies of “The View,” not in muscular characters like Jack Bauer (and Chloe, who gets it) on “24.”

The peace prize concept is flawed because the problem of war does not lie with those who would make peace, but with those who would make war. If the Nobel Committee were realistic, it would stop handing out peace prizes and start issuing awards for those who have confronted evil and produced peace in nations that have only known oppression. Candidates for such prizes would include Ronald Reagan, Margaret Thatcher and Pope John Paul II, who conspired to liberate Europe from the totalitarian hand of Soviet communism.

Bill Clinton would also be a legitimate candidate for his efforts that stabilized Bosnia. He could take some small credit for the peace in Northern Ireland, which, though worked on for decades, was finally brokered on his watch. President Obama was right when he acknowledged that he doesn’t deserve the prize. Neither did Yasser Arafat, Henry Kissinger, Le Duc Tho or Al Gore.

The question should be: Why, despite man’s best efforts, including the League of Nations and United Nations, have we been unsuccessful in eradicating war? The answer lies in this ancient wisdom: “What causes fights and quarrels among you? Don’t they come from your desires that battle within you? You want something but don’t get it. You kill and covet, but you cannot have what you want. You quarrel and fight. You do not have because you do not ask God. When you ask, you do not receive, because you ask with wrong motives that you may spend what you get on your pleasures.” (James 4:1-3)

That’s why a peace prize is meaningless.

Cal Thomas is a columnist for Tribune Media Services.

by Leonard Pitts Jr.

Christmas is probably unconstitutional.

I’m no lawyer, but the logic seems unassailable to me. Consider: Santa Claus aside, Christmas is an explicitly Christian holiday and the only holiday of any religion to be observed by the federal government. Which would seem to violate the First Amendment edict that Congress “shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion.” Yet to the best of my admittedly limited knowledge, no one has ever sued Christmas before the Supreme Court.

Not that I’m trying to give any ideas. No, I’m only trying to tease out an opinion I can live with in a case the court heard last week, about a cross in the Mojave Desert.

The original cross (it has been replaced a number of times over the years) was erected in 1934 as a tribute to the dead of World War I and sits in a remote corner of what is now the Mojave National Preserve. Its legal troubles began 10 years ago with a former employee of the National Park Service who sued because he thought the cross an improper display on federal land in that it celebrated one faith over others.

It’s a contention Justice Antonin Scalia sharply disputed last week. “It’s erected as a war memorial,” he said. “I assume it is erected in honor of all the war dead.”

To which Peter Eliasberg, a lawyer representing the American Civil Liberties Union, shot back: “I have been in Jewish cemeteries. There is never a cross on a tombstone of a Jew.”

Scalia was unconvinced: “I don’t think you can leap from that to the conclusion that the only war dead that the cross honors are the Christian war dead. I think that’s an outrageous conclusion.”

But Eliasberg’s conclusion was, of course, perfectly valid, and Scalia’s obstinate insistence that the cross is a generic symbol manages to simultaneously demean Christianity and deftly illustrate the sort of bullying the Constitution discourages. How easily and readily the majority embraces the myopic view that its symbols and norms represent us all.

That said, I keep wondering what good can come of this.

The plaintiff is said to be a devout Catholic, so we can take it on – ahem – faith that he is motivated solely by principle. For the record, the principle is one I support.

You need only look at Iran to know the separation of church and state is a good thing. You do not post the Ten Commandments in court for the same reason you do not mandate prayer in schools or require Bible study to get a job: There is a coercive effect that is wholly unfair to those of other faiths or no faith at all.

But I have trouble seeing the coercive effect of a cross in the middle of nowhere.

I submit that this is a battle poorly chosen. Yes, the argument arguably has legal merit, but you have to ask yourself: What’s the point? Is someone really injured by a cross in the desert? Or is this not about validating principle at all costs – even public peace and common sense?

Indeed, by the same reasoning, one might sue cities that allow crosses to be planted at roadsides where traffic fatalities have occurred. Except that if it comforts some grieving family and your only “injury” is to glimpse it while driving by at 65 mph, why would you bother? Principle absent human compassion is just intellectual masturbation.

So forgive me if I am unimpressed by the argument that a cross in the middle of nowhere is unconstitutional. Understand: I think the argument may well be correct.

But that’s not the same as being right.

Leonard Pitts Jr. is a columnist for the Miami Herald. His e-mail address is lpitts@miamiherald.com.

Judge rejects challenge to Referendum 71

BY BARRY RUBIN

Monday, January 5th 2009, 4:00 AM

The war in Gaza is the first chapter of a new era in the Middle East. The Arab-Israeli conflict is far from the region’s dominant dispute. The Arab-Islamist conflict now overwhelms it – by a large margin.

Increasingly, Arab regimes know Hamas isn’t their friend and, though they won’t say so publicly, don’t see Israel as an enemy. No wonder: Israel is politically stable and economically prosperous. It doesn’t threaten to take over their countries, overthrow their regimes and stand them in front of a firing squad.

Radical Islamism, Iran-style, does.

That’s right. Arab nations’ prime 21st century enemy is Iran and its allies: Syria, Hezbollah, Hamas and Iraqi terrorists. After destroying their own countries, they want to do the same to everyone else.

Up on the Lebanese border, where I just visited, things are quiet. Hezbollah talks big about its 2006 “victory” but knows how hard Israel hit it then. It’s not looking for trouble with the Jewish state now.

At the same time, Egypt condemns Hamas and urges Israel to smash the radical Islamist group. Lebanese friends tell me they fear that unless Israel and the West stop the Islamists, their country will be taken over in this new year.

The editor of the important Arabic newspaper Al-Sharq al-Awsat, himself a Saudi, warns that Iran and Hamas – effectively at war with Egypt and Saudi Arabia – are the real threat to Arab security.

And the meeting of Arab states last week, instead of producing a condemnation of Israel or America, did nothing.

What was the 2006 Israel-Hezbollah war’s big lesson? That unless Israel wins a clear victory, Islamists will be more aggressive. It’s the same thing the U.S. surge in Iraq demonstrates: pulling punches on terrorists doesn’t make them love you or be peaceable.

Of course, the Israel-Palestinian conflict is far from over: It will probably continue for decades. But that’s precisely the point. It’s an Israel-Palestinian battle, smaller and less strategically significant than this other half-century-long conflict, which involves the whole region.

This is also a conflict among Palestinians. The Palestinian Authority, which rules the West Bank, is still full of radicals but has worked recently to stop terrorist attacks against Israel and to create a stable society. The PA can’t and won’t make full peace with Israel, but the two sides do cooperate in reducing violence.

In contrast, Hamas wants permanent war on Israel, constant terrorism, and openly preaches genocide.

This is what the Obama administration must understand. The Arab-Israeli conflict is relatively unimportant today in regional terms. It is overwhelmed by a dangerous mix of other nations and issues: Iran, Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Lebanon (on the verge of an Iran-Syria takeover), Islamism, terrorism and oil.

Barack Obama must understand that Iran and radical Islamists are out to destroy U.S. interests in the Middle East, expand their own influence and escalate anti-Americanism to murderous proportions around the globe.

Moderate Arabs – and the nations in which they have the most influence – live in constant fear of that happening. America can allay those fears – if it follows a policy mixing intelligence and toughness.

Rather than obsessing over the Arab-Israeli conflict, as many want Obama to do, job one for the new administration in the Mideast should be uniting America’s Arab friends alongside Israel against their common enemies: the fanatical Islamists.

A broad moderate Arab coalition, strengthened to resist the likes of Iran, Hezbollah and Hamas, will not only put the region on far more solid footing. It will help the Israeli-Palestinian mess take care of itself.

Barry Rubin is director of the Global Research in International Affairs Center (GLORIA) and editor of the Middle East Review of International Affairs (MERIA) Journal. He is author of “The Long War for Freedom: The Arab Struggle for Democracy in the Middle East.”

By Saeed Shah and Jonathan S. Landay / McClatchy

From Rev. Wright to Rev. Warren
by William Kristol 12/29/2008

Thursday, December 18, 2008

The Washington Times Editorial

NEWSWEEK

Sign joins Nativity scene as Capitol fray goes on

Protesting the fact that the big evergreen erected each December in the state Capitol was known as a “holiday tree” rather than a Christmas tree, state Rep. John Ahern, R-Spokane, in 2005 added a “Merry Christmas” sign and a menorah. The Spokesman-Review (File The Spokesman-Review ) ‘Religion is but myth’ Text of the sign that a Wisconsin atheist group will soon post opposite a Nativity scene in the Washington state Capitol: “At this season of the winter solstice, may reason prevail. There are no gods, no devils, no angels, no heaven or hell. There is only our natural world. Religion is but myth and superstition that hardens hearts and enslaves minds.”

Richard Roesler
Staff writer
November 29, 2008

OLYMPIA – On Monday in the Washington state Capitol, Christians on one side of the rotunda will erect a Nativity scene, with a 3 1/2-foot-tall Joseph and Mary and a baby Jesus in a manger.

On the other side of the echoing dome, members of an atheist group will post their own display: a 4 1/2-foot-tall sign declaring that there is no God and that “religion is but myth and superstition that hardens hearts and enslaves minds.”

Welcome to the latest chapter in the annual tussle to stake out a piece of holiday real estate in what lawmakers like to call “the people’s house.”

Things were simpler in 2005, before state Rep. John Ahern, R-Spokane, decided to launch a protest against the long-standing offend-no-one practice of declaring the annual evergreen towering inside the Capitol a “holiday tree.” (The 30-foot trees, surrounded by gifts, are donated by the Association of Washington Business.)

Ahern objected, saying the thing was clearly a Christmas tree. In protest, he gathered with a few dozen supporters on the steps of the Capitol to sing carols that year. Then he tucked a little “Merry Christmas” sign at the base of the tree, along with a shiny cardboard cutout of a Jewish menorah.

And so it began. The next year, bearded orthodox rabbis gathered with Gov. Chris Gregoire to light a large menorah in the rotunda. That triggered a request by Olympia real-estate agent Ron Wesselius to erect the Nativity scene.

State officials balked. Wesselius sued. The state settled, and Wesselius last year was allowed to prop up the figures on the Capitol’s third floor.

As a result, Capitol officials now say they’ll honor virtually any request for a religious or political display.

As long as it’s not disruptive, costs taxpayers nothing and is not seen as the state endorsing any viewpoint, “it’s pretty much wide open,” said Steve Valandra, spokesman for General Administration, the state agency that issues the permits. “It’s free expression.”

After all, he pointed out, state officials had to let about a dozen uniformed neo-Nazis use the Capitol steps for a white-separatist rally in July 2006. Hundreds of state troopers spent the afternoon keeping the Nazis and hundreds of counter-demonstrators separated.

Still, some think the religious expressions go too far.

The Olympian newspaper recently decried the competing displays as “an out-of-control struggle for religious superiority” and “escalating nonsense.”

“How long will it be before the Capitol is filled with competing displays?” the paper asked. “Goat sacrifices?”

Ahern said religion is under attack in popular society, and all major religions should be free to have a display in the Statehouse.

“We are a Judeo-Christian nation, and we need to honor the different times of year for Christians, Jews and even Muslims,” he said.

Christmas trees, menorahs and displays for Ramadan should all be welcomed, Ahern said. But the atheist sign, he said, is a step too far.

“This is bizarre,” he said. “Atheism is not a religion. It doesn’t belong there. And I would definitely not want to see Satanism up there at all.”

The request for the atheists’ display came from the Freedom From Religion Foundation, a Wisconsin-based group that says a local member asked it to put it up. For years, the group has erected a nearly identical sign in the Wisconsin state Capitol in Madison. To protect the sign, the group tapes to it a little note: “Thou shalt not steal.”

Valandra said that so far, things have worked out pretty well. Wesselius erected his Nativity display last year on the third floor, with no complaints.

This year, the only applications for displays were for the Nativity scene and the atheist sign. Both will remain up until Dec. 29.

The closest the state has gotten to turning someone down, Valandra said, was last December, when a Tacoma truck driver announced plans to torch a Mexican flag on the Capitol steps. But as officials mulled it – Would it pollute? Does that require a burn permit? – the man dropped the idea.

As for the specter of some religious group slaughtering goats before horrified tourists and schoolchildren, Valandra said that scene is unlikely.

“I don’t think slaughtering animals on the Capitol campus would be permitted, and you can quote me on that,” he said.

SAN FRANCISCO — In one of the nation’s largest displays of support for gay rights, tens of thousands of people in cities across the country turned out in support of same-sex marriage on Saturday, lending their voices to an issue that many gay men and lesbians consider a critical step to full equality.

The demonstrations — from a sun-splashed throng in San Francisco to a chilly crowd in Minneapolis — came 11 days after California voters narrowly passed a ballot measure, Proposition 8, that outlawed previously legal same-sex ceremonies in the state. The measure’s passage has spurred protests in California and across the country, including at several Mormon temples, a reflection of that church’s ardent backing of the proposition.

On Saturday, speakers painted the fight over Proposition 8 as another test of a movement that began with the riots at the Stonewall Inn in New York in 1969, survived the emergence of the AIDS crisis in the 1980s, and has since made enormous strides in societal acceptance, whether in television shows or in antidiscrimination laws.

“It’s not ‘Yes we can,’ ” said Tom Ammiano, a San Francisco city supervisor, referring to President-elect Barack Obama’s campaign mantra. “It’s ‘Yes we will.’ ”

Carrying handmade signs with slogans like “No More Mr. Nice Gay” and “Straights Against Hate,” big crowds filled civic centers and streets in many cities. In New York, some 4,000 people gathered at City Hall, where speakers repeatedly called same-sex marriage “the greatest civil rights battle of our generation.”

“We are not going to rest at night until every citizen in every state in this country can say, ‘This is the person I love,’ and take their hand in marriage,” said Representative Anthony D. Weiner of Brooklyn.

In Los Angeles, where wildfires had temporarily grabbed headlines from continuing protests over Proposition 8, Mayor Antonio R. Villaraigosa addressed a crowd of about 9,000 people in Spanish and English, and seemed to express confidence that the measure, which is being challenged in California courts, would be overturned.

“I’ve come here from the fires because I feel the wind at my back as well,” said the mayor, who arrived at a downtown rally from the fire zone on a helicopter. “It’s the wind of change that has swept the nation. It is the wind of optimism and hope.”

About 900 protesters braved a tornado watch and menacing rain clouds in Washington to rally in front of the Capitol and on to the White House. “Gay, straight, black, white; marriage is a civil right,” the marchers chanted.

In Las Vegas, the comedian Wanda Sykes surprised a crowd of more than 1,000 rallying outside a gay community center by announcing that she is gay and had wed her wife in California on Oct. 25. Ms. Sykes, who divorced her husband of seven years in 1998, had never publicly discussed her sexual orientation but said the passage of Proposition 8 had propelled her to be open about it.

“I felt like I was being attacked, personally attacked — our community was attacked,” she told the crowd.

And while some speakers were obviously eager to tap crowds’ current outrage, others took pains to cast the demonstrations as a peaceful, long-term, campaign over an issue that has proved remarkably and consistently divisive.

“We need to be our best selves,” said the Rev. G. Penny Nixon, a gay pastor from San Mateo, Calif., who warned the San Francisco crowd against blaming “certain communities” for the election loss. “This is a movement based on love.”

The protests were organized largely over the Internet, and featured few representatives of major gay rights groups that campaigned against Proposition 8, which passed with 52 percent of the vote after trailing for months in the polls. The online aspect seemed to draw a broad cross-section of people, like Nicole Toussaint, a kindergarten teacher who joined a crowd of more than 1,000 people in Minneapolis.

“I’m here to support my friends who are gay,” said Ms. Toussaint, 23. “I think my generation will play a big role.”

The big crowds notwithstanding, it has been a tough month for gay rights. Proposition 8 was just one of three measures on same-sex marriage passed on Nov. 4, with constitutional bans also being approved in Arizona and Florida. In Arkansas, voters passed a measure aimed at barring gay men and lesbians from adopting children.

That vote was on the minds of many of the 200 people who protested Saturday in front of the State Capitol in Little Rock. One of those, Barb L’Eplattenier, 39, a university professor, said some of her gay friends with adopted children were fearful of state action if they appeared in public. “They think their families are in danger,” said Ms. L’Eplattenier, who married her partner, Sarah Scanlon, in California in July.

The protests over Proposition 8 also come even as same-sex marriages began Wednesday in Connecticut, which joined Massachusetts as the only states allowing such ceremonies. By contrast, 30 states have constitutional bans on such unions.

At a Boston rally on Saturday, Kate Leslie, an organizer, said the loss in California had certainly caught the attention of local gay men and lesbians who have had the right to marry since 2004.

“You’re watching people who could be you and are part of your community being stripped of their rights,” Ms. Leslie said. “And in some ways that’s why so many people are infuriated in Massachusetts and willing to stand up for a rally.”

In California, a State Supreme Court decision legalized same-sex marriage in May. As many as 18,000 couples married, some traveling from other states to tie the knot. Such marriages may be challenged in court.

David McMullin, a garden designer from Atlanta, was one of those who made the trip, marrying his partner in Oakland, Calif., in September, in part to let their two adoptive children feel part of a married family.

“We just want our kids to know we’re O.K.,” said Mr. McMullin, who had come to a protest in front of the Georgia State Capitol. “We have rights as people even if we don’t have rights as citizens.”

Supporters of the proposition have repeatedly argued that Proposition 8 was not antigay, but merely pro-marriage.

“The marriage is between a man and women,” said Frank Schubert, the campaign manager for Protect Marriage, the leading group behind passing Proposition 8. “If they want to legalize same-sex marriage, they are going to have to bring a proposal before the people of California. That’s how democracy works.”

Equality California, a major gay rights group here, indicated this week that it would work to repeal Proposition 8 if legal challenges fail.

Such dry approaches seemed a million miles away, however, from the boisterous scene in front of San Francisco City Hall on Saturday, where as many as 10,000 people gathered, carrying signs, American flags and even copies of their marriage licenses.

One of those was Lawrence Dean, 57, who had married his partner, Steven Lyle, in San Francisco in July. It was the fifth time that the couple of 19 years had held a ceremony to announce their commitment, and, of course, accept wedding gifts.

“If we keep this up, maybe I won’t have to again,” Mr. Dean said, looking out at the protest. “I have enough pots and pans.”

Reporting was contributed by Robbie Brown from Atlanta; Steve Barnes from Little Rock; Christina Capecchi from Minneapolis; Francesca Segrè from Los Angeles; Katie Zezima from Boston; Ashley Southall from Washington; Steve Friess from Las Vegas; and C. J. Hughes from New York.

Linda P. Campbell
Fort Worth Star-Telegram
September 22, 2008

Sure, you sometimes want to shake Joe Biden and shout, “When are you going to get to your question and let the witness speak?”

But can Sarah Palin say she’s helped evaluate the qualifications of every sitting U.S. Supreme Court justice?

Biden, the Democrats’ nominee for vice president, voted on 11 of the last 12 Supreme Court appointees. (He was sick and didn’t vote when the Senate approved Justice Anthony Kennedy 97-0 in 1988.)

Biden voted to approve Republicans as well as Democrats – though he opposed “conservative” heroes Robert Bork, whose nomination failed in 1987, and Clarence Thomas, both of whose hearings were surrounded by ugly and contentious interest-group battles.

It might be surprising to learn that while Biden voted against both of George W. Bush’s appointees, the accomplished and likable John Roberts and longtime appellate Judge Samuel Alito, the 35-year senator voted for Justice Antonin Scalia, who’s been one of the court’s most doctrinaire conservative members.

But Scalia was approved 98-0 in 1986, despite resisting efforts to probe his judicial philosophy, as Democrats focused on opposing (unsuccessfully) Justice William Rehnquist’s elevation to chief.

Unlike Palin, the Republican vice presidential nominee, Biden has a long record to examine for insight into how he might influence the selection of Supreme Court justices.

But there’s more to it than just looking at his votes.

Legal affairs writer Jeffrey Rosen argues that, during the Bork and Thomas hearings, Biden didn’t do the bidding of abortion-rights groups, something for which “women’s groups remain angry at Biden to this day.” Instead, he was interested in a broader concept of privacy, important to most Americans, the idea that the Constitution protects such things as the contraception choices of married couples.

Biden opposed Roberts and Alito in part because he found their answers lacking on the scope of constitutional safeguards for privacy.

Palin, who has a journalism degree, is neither a lawyer nor has she taught constitutional law, like Biden.

But in Alaska, the governor selects judges from a committee’s recommendations, and the appointees later run in retention elections.

In her less than two years as governor, Palin has appointed 13 judges, including a state Supreme Court justice, Joe Palazzolo and Tony Mauro wrote recently on law.com.

They reported that Palin asked at least one candidate whether the Constitution is a living, breathing document – a bugaboo for those like Scalia who favor an “original intent” approach to constitutional interpretation.

On the other hand, liberals might give Palin points for supporting a $200,000 appropriation for the Alaska Legal Services Corp., given that Republicans do not have a history of particularly favoring legal services agencies.

Nowhere is the vice president charged with helping pick Supreme Court members, but the last two VPs have been heavily involved. The next president almost surely will name one or more justices.

I’m not convinced that hopes or fears about how the next president might shape the Supreme Court should decide which candidate to choose.

Keep in mind that it’s easier to predict the volatile and divisive issues likely to come before the court in the short term – property rights, the death penalty, business regulations, etc. – than those likely to be thrust upon them unexpectedly: Bush v. Gore, anyone? Detainees’ rights?

Also consider that it’s been the Supreme Court that’s checked the Bush administration’s power-grabbing attempts and managed to maintain the Constitution’s balances.

Rosen wrote in The New Republic that, “with Biden at his side, (Barack) Obama has more than a like-minded defender of civil liberties; he has one of the nation’s most effective spokesmen on their behalf.”

Can McCain-Palin say as much?

Watch all four clips and then compose your post re. what was covered on at least two of the topics addressed by VP candidate Joe Biden:

When does life begin?

The surge in Iraq

Governor Palin

Close Election

Prompt:  Watch one or both of the interview videos below.  What are your thoughts on the responses and performance of each candidate?  What questions, if any would you have for the candidates on this topic?

Saddleback Debate – McCain

Saddleback Debate – Obama

Leonard Pitts Jr.
The Miami Herald
August 22, 2008

First I spent long moments trying to decide upon my greatest moral failing. Then I spent longer moments asking myself whether I’d really want to share that failing with an audience of millions.

So much for playing along at home.

By the time I was done agonizing, Hamlet-like, over that question, posed by Pastor Rick Warren during his televised presidential forum at Saddleback Church in Orange County, Calif., he had gone to a commercial.

Color me impressed, then, with both Sen. Barack Obama and Sen. John McCain for not stammering homina homina homina – as I would have – and promptly answering that and other toughies during last week’s forum. And color me impressed with the program itself; it was that rare campaign appearance that imparted something of value.

Credit the decision to ask both men identical questions; it allowed voters to draw sharp comparisons and contrasts. Credit also the questions themselves, which were designed to elicit not 10-point plans and strategic visions but, rather, some sense of how a man’s mind works, some inventory of his soul.

John McCain gave the more impressive performance. His answers were crisp and concise where Obama’s were long and thoughtful. Where Obama navigated shifting shades of gray in answering questions about faith, gay marriage and the existence of evil, McCain’s answers were as direct as an arrow in flight.

Take, for example, a question about when a fetus gets human rights. Obama responded that, whether one is speaking theologically or scientifically, the answer is “above my pay grade.” He went on to say he supports Roe v. Wade “not because I’m pro-abortion but because, ultimately, I don’t think women make these decisions casually. I think they wrestle with these things in profound ways.” Finally, he expressed his wish to reduce the number of abortions, while not restricting access to them.

McCain said, “At the moment of conception.”

I found myself wishing Dr. Frankenstein was around to combine each candidate’s best qualities into one. That expedient being unavailable, we are left to parse the ways last week’s forum illuminates the strengths and weaknesses of the candidates and the parties they represent.

Obama, for all his vaunted rhetorical agility and eloquence, seemed curiously leaden. Like legions of Democrats before him, he was unable to find a way of explaining nuanced positions in concise and compelling ways.

In answering the abortion question, for instance, one could argue that he – to use a journalism term – buried the lede.

Might he not have been more effective had he said from the beginning that his goal is to keep abortions legal but make them rare?

Republicans, of course, don’t have the burden Democrats do; by and large, they don’t do nuance. On abortion (outlaw it), immigration (build a fence) and just about every other issue you can name, they are as clear and blunt as a punch in the nose. There is a stark simplicity to their positions that is undeniably appealing.

But if these last years have taught us nothing else, they’ve taught us not to mistake stark simplicity for wisdom. That, after all, was supposed to have been the key to George W. Bush’s appeal: He was a plain-spoken guy of plain-spoken values, not some egghead intellectual elitist noodling around in shades of gray.

Seven years later, we see where that’s gotten us. The one thing most of us agree on is that the country is a mess.

It’s something to remember as candidates struggle to explain who they are and what they believe, something these last years should have made abundantly clear.

The simplest answer is not always the best.

Speed of heart extractions raises ethical questions

Rob Stein
Washington Post
August 14, 2008

WASHINGTON – Surgeons in Denver are publishing their first account of a controversial procedure in which they remove the hearts of severely brain-damaged newborns less than two minutes after the babies are disconnected from life support, and their hearts stop beating, so the organs can be transplanted into infants who would otherwise die.

A detailed description of the transplants in today’s issue of the New England Journal of Medicine immediately ignited an intense debate about whether the first-of-their-kind procedures are pushing an already controversial organ-retrieval strategy beyond acceptable legal, moral and ethical bounds.

The doctors who performed the operations as part of a federally funded research project defended the practice, and some advocates for organ donation praised the operations as offering the first clear evidence that the procedures could provide desperately needed hearts for terminally ill babies.

Critics, however, are questioning the propriety of removing hearts from patients, especially babies, who are not brain dead and are asking whether the Denver doctors wait long enough to make sure the infants met either of the long-accepted definitions of death – complete, irreversible cessation of brain function or of heart and lung function. Some even said the operations are tantamount to murder.

“This bold experiment is pushing the boundaries and raising many questions,” said James Bernat, a Dartmouth medical professor who wrote one of four commentaries that the journal published with the report – an unusual step that anticipated the firestorm of reaction the procedures would cause. The journal posted them on its Web site with a videotaped debate among three prominent bioethicists.

“This clearly shows the feasibility of doing this,” Bernat said. “The question is: Should this be done?”  This is the issue I would like you to focus on for this post – Kautzman

The operations are occurring as transplant advocates have become increasingly aggressive in trying to bridge the gap between the number of available livers, kidneys, hearts and other organs and the number of Americans on the waiting list for transplants.

Since the 1970s, most organs have been removed only after doctors declared a patient brain dead. But in the hopes of obtaining more organs, federal health officials, transplant surgeons and organ banks have been intensely promoting “donation after cardiac death,” or DCD. DCD usually involves patients who have devastating and irreversible brain damage but are not actually brain dead. Their families consent to removing life support, and their organs are removed minutes after the patients’ hearts stop beating.

While the procedure has become increasingly common in adults, it remains highly controversial. Critics say it endangers the care of dying patients – a California surgeon is facing criminal charges that he tried to hasten the death of a potential DCD donor in 2006 – and has raised questions about whether the donors are truly dead.

To address such concerns, hospitals follow strict guidelines, including requiring a clear division between doctors caring for the patients and those removing and transplanting the organs. Most also require surgeons to wait at least two minutes – and usually five – after a heart stops to make sure it does not spontaneously start beating again on its own, which has occurred in rare cases.

The Washington Post reported last year that doctors at the Denver Children’s Hospital had started removing hearts from babies, sometimes waiting only 75 seconds to increase the chances that the organs would be viable. The new report marks the first time the doctors have described their efforts in a medical journal.

The report details three cases between 2004 and 2007 involving babies who experienced severe brain damage from oxygen deprivation during birth. Their parents decided to discontinue life support several days following their birth after doctors told them there was no hope. The surgeons waited three minutes before removing the first baby’s heart, but just 75 seconds for the second and third after an ethics panel monitoring the research decided that would be sufficient.

Surgeons transplanted the hearts into three babies 1 to 4 months old who were dying of heart problems. Six months later, all three recipients were alive.

“We’re very pleased with the lives we saved,” said Mark Boucek, who led the team before moving to the Joe DiMaggio Children’s Hospital in Hollywood, Fla. “We’re trying to deal with a very difficult situation where children die waiting for transplant and parents of other children want to donate.”

James Burdick of the Health and Human Services Department, which funded the study, agreed.

“In a very important way, it’s a wonderful story. You had three situations with hopeless medical problems who would have otherwise died but got this gift of life,” he said. “It’s an important demonstration of what is possible.”

But critics questioned whether the donor babies were truly dead when their hearts were removed. In those cases, the hearts were restarted in another child’s body, meaning cessation was not irreversible, they argued.

“This practice cannot be ethically justified,” said George Annas, a Boston University bioethicist. “The donors are not dead. I understand that they would like us to change the definition of death, but they can’t do that by themselves. It’s very problematic to start treating a baby as an organ donor before it’s dead.”

Robert Veatch, a Georgetown University bioethicist, went further, saying the deaths were equivalent to murder.

“The whole issue is whether the infants from whom the hearts were taken were dead. It seems very clear to me that they were not,” he said. “I think it’s illegal, and if it’s illegal, what we’re talking about is the physicians causing the death of the three patients, and that would be homicide. It’s immoral. I think it should be stopped.”

Boucek, the cardiologist, argued that the hearts were incapable of functioning in the newborns from whom they were removed, satisfying the criteria for pronouncing the babies dead.

“At the end of the day, we feel we are on very firm ground,” he said. “There is no question these all met the criteria that one would establish for death.”

By Roland S. Martin
CNN Contributor

Join Roland Martin for his weekly sound-off segment on CNN.com Live at 11:10 a.m. Thursday. If you’re passionate about politics, he wants to hear from you.

ACCRA, Ghana (CNN) — “All I want is for my children to get the best education they can.”

That statement, along with so many others, has been a consistent one that I’ve heard on my radio show and in discussions with parents for years, especially those whose children are stuck in inner-city schools with decrepit buildings and a lack of critical resources.

And for the past 20 years, one of the most talked-about solutions for parents stuck in dead-end, failing schools is to give them the option to use vouchers to send their children someplace where they could get a quality education.

Republicans have made vouchers a linchpin of their education overhaul initiatives. Democrats have steadfastly refused, saying it would take vital dollars out of the public school system.

This year’s presidential candidates are lining up right along with their parties. Sen. John McCain, the GOP nominee, says vouchers are the right way to go to give parents an option for a better education, while Sen. Barack Obama says the GOP has talked and talked about vouchers, and it hasn’t amounted to much more.

But part of the reason why vouchers have been denounced and dismissed is because Democrats have been far too obstinate on the issue, and have not listened to their constituents, especially African-Americans, who overwhelmingly support vouchers.

There is no doubt that on this issue, McCain has it right and Obama has it wrong.

The fundamental problem with the voucher debate is that it is always seen as an either/or proposition. For Republicans, it is the panacea to all the educational woes, and that is nonsensical. For Democrats, it is something that will destroy public education, and that too is a bunch of crap.

I fundamentally believe that vouchers are simply one part of the entire educational pie. There simply is no one sure-fire way to educate a child. We’ve seen public schools do a helluva job — I went to them from K through college — and so have private schools, home schooling, charter schools and even online initiatives. This is the kind of innovation we need, not more efforts to prevent a worthy idea from moving forward.

Obama’s opposition is right along the lines of the National Education Association, and the teachers union is a reliable and powerful Democratic ally. But this is one time where he should have opposed them and made it clear that vouchers can force school districts, administrators and teachers to shape up or see their students ship out.

It is unconscionable to ask a parent to watch as his child is stuck in a failing school or district, and ask him to bank on a politician coming up with more funds to improve the situation. Fine, call vouchers a short-term solution to a long-term problem, but I’d rather have a child getting the best education — now — rather than having to hope and pray down the line.

McCain and Obama have presented comprehensive education plans, and those are noble. But leaving out vouchers does a tremendous disservice to the parents who are fed up with deplorable schools, and allows school districts to operate with impunity and without any real competition.

Roland S. Martin is an award-winning journalist and CNN contributor. He is the author of “Listening to the Spirit Within: 50 Perspectives on Faith.” Please visit his Web site at http://www.rolandsmartin.com/

This article was suggested by R. Damiano.

Washington Post
July 20, 2008

PIERRE, S.D. – In a victory for antiabortion forces, doctors in South Dakota are now required to tell a woman seeking an abortion that the procedure “will terminate the life of a whole, separate, unique living human being.”

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 8th Circuit last week lifted a preliminary injunction that prevented the language from taking effect. A spokesman for Planned Parenthood, which runs the state’s only abortion clinic, said doctors will begin reciting the script to patients as early as this week.

On another front, South Dakota voters will be asked in a Nov. 4 referendum to consider broad limits on abortion for the second time since 2006. The ballot measure includes exceptions for rape, incest and the woman’s health that were not part of the 2006 wording rejected by voters.

Antiabortion forces in South Dakota have been trying for years to halt the procedure and to build a winnable challenge to Roe v. Wade, the 1973 Supreme Court decision legalizing abortion nationwide.

A law that took effect July 1 requires doctors to ask a woman seeking an abortion if she wants to see a sonogram of the fetus. About 700 abortions are performed in South Dakota each year.

The doctors’ script that officially took effect Friday has been tied up in court since 2005, when Planned Parenthood challenged a law that instructed physicians what to tell abortion patients. Under the law, doctors must say that the woman has “an existing relationship” with the fetus that is protected by the U.S. Constitution and that “her existing constitutional rights with regards to that relationship will be terminated.” Also, the doctor is required to say that “abortion increases the risk of suicide ideation and suicide.”

The message must be delivered no earlier than two hours before the procedure. The woman must say in writing that she understands.

By Shailagh Murray and Peter Slevin
Washington Post Staff Writers
Tuesday, April 29, 2008; A01

Sen. Barack Obama again sought to distance himself from the Rev. Jeremiah A. Wright Jr. yesterday after his former pastor capped a weekend media offensive with an appearance in Washington in which he revisited many of his most controversial comments.

“He does not speak for me,” the Democratic presidential candidate said as he campaigned across North Carolina. “He does not speak for the campaign.”

Obama aides said Wright had rebuffed their recent offers of public relations assistance. They stressed that they had no warning about a media blitz that included an appearance with Bill Moyers on PBS on Friday night, a nationally televised speech to the NAACP in Detroit on Sunday evening and yesterday’s appearance at the National Press Club.

Wright, the former pastor at Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago who officiated at Obama’s wedding and baptized his two daughters, became the center of controversy after clips from some of his most inflammatory sermons hit the airwaves earlier this year. In one sermon, delivered the Sunday after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, Wright said that “America’s chickens are coming home to roost” for its own acts of “terrorism.” In another, he said blacks should sing “God damn America” instead of “God Bless America” to protest centuries of mistreatment.

Speaking before a sold-out gathering that was broadcast live on cable news networks yesterday, Wright told a mostly African American audience that his preaching has been misconstrued by journalists and political pundits who do not understand black religious tradition, which he said was founded amid slavery and racial intolerance and “still is invisible to the dominant culture.”

“Maybe now we can begin to take steps to move the black religious tradition from the status of invisible to the status of invaluable, not just for some black people in this country but for all the people in this country.”

In his prepared remarks, Wright traced the origins of the African American church in a measured tone and academic language. But during the question-and-answer session that followed, he was defiant.

Queried about his post-Sept. 11 sermon, Wright said: “Well, let me try to respond in a non-bombastic way. If you heard the whole sermon, first of all, you heard that I was quoting the ambassador from Iraq. That’s number one. But, number two, to quote the Bible, ‘Be not deceived. God is not mocked. For whatsoever you sow, that you also shall reap.’ Jesus said, ‘Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.’ ”

Wright continued: “You cannot do terrorism on other people and expect it never to come back on you. Those are biblical principles, not Jeremiah Wright bombastic, divisive principles.”

Challenged about his patriotism, the former Marine exclaimed: “I served six years in the military. Does that make me patriotic? How many years did Cheney serve?”

Wright also restated the idea that HIV was invented as a weapon against minority communities, had kind words for Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan and railed against American imperialism.

The media attention to Wright’s recent appearances has created another headache for the Obama campaign. The senator from Illinois is struggling to close out the primary season against Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (N.Y.) after losing key races in Ohio and Pennsylvania and seeing new doubts raised about his prospects in a general election against Sen. John McCain (Ariz.), the presumptive Republican nominee.

At a hastily called news conference, Obama made clear his displeasure with his former pastor. “I think, certainly, what the last three days indicate is that we’re not coordinating with him,” Obama said, although he added: “He’s obviously free to speak his mind.”

“Reverend Wright is speaking for Reverend Wright,” said David Axelrod, Obama’s senior political adviser. “He’s making his own decisions. He’s not seeking guidance.” Nor is the campaign happy with the results. Axelrod added: “I think it’s pretty clear that Reverend Wright is not out there with the intent of helping Senator Obama. He’s out there with his own program.”

While Obama sought to tamp down the revived controversy, Wright, in turn, aired a note of displeasure with his former congregant. Obama delivered a speech on race in Philadelphia last month that denounced Wright’s sharpest remarks and cast the preacher as an older black man whose views had not changed with the times.

“He had to distance himself, because he’s a politician, from what the media was saying I had said, which was anti-American. He said I didn’t offer any words of hope. How would he know? He never heard the rest of the sermon. You never heard it,” Wright said.

He also joked that he was open to serving as Obama’s vice president, and he noted that he would be knocking on the White House door if Obama were to win the general election. “I said to Barack Obama last year, ‘If you get elected, November the 5th, I’m coming after you, because you’ll be representing a government whose policies grind under people.’ All right? It’s about policy, not the American people.”

Clinton passed on the chance to fan the Wright controversy, only reiterating during an appearance in North Carolina that if she were Obama, she would have left Trinity because of Wright’s remarks. But she quickly pivoted to Republicans and an inflammatory ad the state GOP is airing that features Wright and attempts to link the state’s two Democratic gubernatorial candidates, both of whom have endorsed Obama, to the pastor. “I regret the efforts by the Republicans to politicize this matter,” Clinton said.

McCain has denounced the state party ad but has not shied away from addressing Obama’s ties to Wright. Over the weekend, he acknowledged what he called the “anger” of some Americans about Wright’s comments and called Obama “out of touch” with voters.

But he and his advisers also see risks in playing to racial passions. McCain has said he does not think Obama shares Wright’s most controversial views, including his HIV theories and his defense of Farrakhan.

The Rev. Deborah F. Grant, a close friend of Wright’s and the pastor of St. John African Methodist Episcopal Church in Columbus, Ga., said the scrutiny of Wright is unfair, because he is being examined through a political lens. “He has not been called to be a politician. He’s been called to speak the gospel.”

But even his allies wonder how long the controversy will linger. Rep. James E. Clyburn (D-S.C.) said he watched Wright’s NAACP speech twice and thought “he did a very good job of defining himself for anybody who didn’t know what he is.” On the other hand, Clyburn added, “if you’re not interested, or you’re looking for some peg, then it may not make any difference to you.”

Slevin reported from North Carolina. Staff writers Eli Saslow and Michael D. Shear contributed to this report.

By Charles C. Haynes
First Amendment Center
April 2, 2008

When we choose a president, should religion matter?

Like it or not, religion matters in presidential politics. But rarely in our history has it mattered so much as it does in the 2008 campaign.

Officially, of course, “no religious Test shall ever be required as a Qualification to any Office or public Trust under the United States” – as set forth in Article VI of the Constitution.

Unofficially, however, voters are free to administer their own religious tests – and that’s exactly what many are doing in this election.

Mitt Romney tried to avoid “the speech,” but he was finally compelled to address the Mormon question earlier this year. Although generally well-received by many conservatives, Romney’s speech didn’t appear to budge the significant portion of the electorate who tell pollsters they won’t vote for a Mormon. How much this hurt him in the primaries is debatable, but it clearly didn’t help.

Last week, it was Barack Obama’s turn in the religion hot seat after sound bites from sermons of his longtime pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, began circulating in the media. It remains to be seen whether Obama succeeds in confronting the volatile topics of race and religion in our society while at the same time distancing himself from Wright’s inflammatory rhetoric about the failures of the American system.

Of course, Romney and Obama aren’t the only candidates to face a religion test. Mike Huckabee, a former Baptist pastor, benefited from the evangelical vote in some states but clearly suffered from being pigeonholed as the “evangelical candidate” in others.

And John McCain has had to distance himself from the anti-Catholic views of Texas televangelist John Hagee after initially embracing Hagee’s endorsement. McCain has also come under fire for his association with the Rev. Rod Parsley, an influential megachurch pastor who calls for a Christian war to destroy the “false religion” of Islam.

None of these religious controversies, however, is as bizarre or disturbing as the Internet-fueled lie that Barack Obama is a secret Muslim. It’s appalling enough that so many people apparently consider it a disqualifying slur to call a candidate a Muslim. But add to the mix the vicious charge that Obama is a Manchurian Muslim candidate – even the Antichrist – and what emerges is a very ugly picture of what religious bigotry looks like when it spins out of control.

Personally, I don’t like religious tests – official or otherwise – because religious affiliation should not determine a person’s qualifications for public office. But having said that, I do think the public has every right to inquire about the religious or philosophical views of candidates in a presidential race. After all, voters want to know the sources of values and convictions that would shape a president’s decisions.

The challenge – especially for the news media – is to get beyond stereotypes about Mormons, evangelicals, Muslims or African-American preachers and provide the context for a fair, informed understanding of the role of faith in a candidate’s life.

Consider the current flap over Wright. Will the debate get stuck in the loop of those incendiary sound bites played endlessly on YouTube? Or will the media and the voters have the patience to put Wright’s sermons – and his church – in context by learning some of the history and experience behind the words? (NPR gets high marks for attempting to do this as soon as the story broke.)

Without some knowledge of the role of the black church in the political and social history of African-Americans, without some exposure to black liberation theology, and without some understanding of how African-Americans often view racism in America, it is difficult, if not impossible, to sort out the meaning of the controversy swirling around Obama’s relationship to Wright.

Understanding doesn’t necessarily translate into support. However well informed, voters may still reject Obama – or any other candidate – and religious affiliation may well be one factor. But at least the “religious test” should be an essay question and not a fill-in-the-blank exercise.

Unofficial religious tests are unlikely to disappear from the political arena. But let’s hope that such tests don’t determine the outcome of the presidential race. The real test should not be religious affiliation, but rather the character and judgment necessary to lead at this difficult time in our history.

Abraham Lincoln, after all, belonged to no church. But his moral compass served the nation well.

Robert Scheer
Creators Syndicate
March 29, 2008

Would God ever damn America? Is there anything we have done or could do as a nation that might court such severe judgment from an almighty, or is there a peculiar American exemption from God’s wrath? The prediction of God’s damnation for bad behavior is made in both black and white churches.

Clearly no less an authority on such matters than the Rev. Pat Robertson, who didn’t think the latter when he blamed the ravaging effects of Hurricane Katrina on the Lord’s retribution toward those who “shed innocent blood.” Robertson’s reference to legalized abortion cited a passage from Leviticus that the Rev. Jeremiah Wright also might have been noting when he sermonized: “The government … wants us to sing ‘God Bless America.’ No, no, no, God damn America, that’s in the Bible for killing innocent people,” a reference to African-Americans sacrificed on ghetto streets.

While the “innocents” about whom they spoke are different, the scriptural reference seems to be the same. As Robertson put it, preserved in a video clip posted on the Internet by Media Matters: “I was reading yesterday … about what God has to say in the Old Testament about those who shed innocent blood … ‘the land will vomit you out,’ ” which he related to attacks “either by terrorists or now by natural disaster.”

Robertson, a firm ally of Republican administrations, has not always warmed to the presumed GOP presidential nominee, Sen. John McCain, although the two recently have mended their strained relationship. However, in this season of pastor baiting, McCain has his own problem, having expressed his thrill in receiving “the endorsement of Pastor John Hagee.”

Hagee, citing a planned “homosexual parade,” had previously told National Public Radio that Hurricane Katrina was God’s punishment of the people of New Orleans for “a level of sin that was offensive to God.” Obviously, the almighty with whom Hagee is on intimate terms is in need of MapQuest, given that New Orleans’ gay neighborhoods were among the ones least impacted by the hurricane.

Hagee long has been denounced by Catholics for labeling the Vatican “The Great Whore” and blaming Hitler’s genocidal policies on his having “attended a Catholic school as a child.” The one that has some current relevance to the Iraq disaster is Hagee’s blasting the Roman Catholic Church for sponsoring the Crusades, which “plunged the world into the Dark Ages.”

In a warning that imperial adventures lose some of their luster with the passage of time, Hagee wrote in his book, “Jerusalem Countdown”: “The brutal truth is that the Crusades were military campaigns of the Roman Catholic Church to gain control of Jerusalem from the Muslims and to punish the Jews as the alleged Christ killers on the road to and from Jerusalem.” What will future theologians say about Bush’s crusade to liberate Iraq, shedding the blood of hundreds of thousands of innocents?

I know what the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. would say were he alive today, for it would be consistent with his denunciation of the Vietnam War in a sermon at New York’s Riverside Church a year before his assassination. Recounting his difficulty in spreading the message of nonviolence and personal responsibility to the very ghetto youth that the Rev. Wright has worked with for four decades, King stated, “I knew that I could never again raise my voice against the violence of the oppressed in the ghettos without having first spoken clearly to the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today: my own government.”

King delivered that speech the year Wright ended his six years of service in the U.S. Marine Corps and Navy, for which he received three commendations from President Lyndon Johnson, whom King was confronting. No doubt Wright was influenced by King’s oratory decrying “the cruel irony of watching Negro and white boys on TV screens … in brutal solidarity burning the huts of a poor village, but we realize that they would hardly live on the same block in Chicago. I could not be silent in the face of such cruel manipulation of the poor.” And neither could Wright.

I respect Barack Obama’s right to repudiate his pastor’s comments, as he did, but I respect even more his refusal to throw the man overboard in a practice we witnessed all too often with the Clintons when they came under right-wing attacks. Hillary did it again, Tuesday, telling the right-wing Pittsburgh Tribune-Review editorial board that Wright: “would not have been my pastor.”

So she says, but the record shows she was there in the White House on Sept. 11, 1998, when her husband posed for a photo with Wright and was grateful for his support in the midst of that wrath-of-Leviticus blue dress flap. Ingrate.

Barack Obama’s church is under scrutiny. But what’s it really like on the inside?

Lisa Miller

NEWSWEEK

Updated: 3:11 PM ET Mar 15, 2008

The year was 1971, race riots flared across the country, and on the South Side of Chicago a tiny church was dying. Many blacks, disillusioned by their ministers’ failure to bring home the promises of the civil-rights movement, were abandoning Christianity. They converted to Islam or Judaism or fringe sects—or refused to go to church at all. This particular congregation was looking for a pastor to lead them through these troubling times, and before they launched their search, they wrote a blue-sky description of the community they wanted to be: we want to “serve as instruments of God and church,” the statement said, and we want to “elimin[ate] those things in our culture that lead to the dehumanization of persons.” They wanted to be Christian, in other words. And they wanted to keep fighting.

On New Year’s Eve, the search committee interviewed its final candidate. Jeremiah Wright Jr. was a young pastor enrolled at the University of Chicago Divinity School. Wright belonged to a group of black intellectuals who embraced “black liberation theology,” the idea that blacks shouldn’t have to choose between “Malcolm and Martin,” as the theologians put it. They could be Christian and black; they could be black and proud. When Barack Obama responded to the altar call at Trinity United Church of Christ in 1988, he was responding, in part, to that message.

Wright built Trinity into a huge church, with 8,500 people coming to worship on Sundays. Earlier this month, after a yearlong transition, Wright handed his pulpit over to the young and charismatic pastor Otis Moss III. In his heyday, Wright was a forceful presence, calling for divestment from South Africa as early as 1983. By keeping the problem of racism alive with provocative sermons, Wright encouraged his flock to “speak truth to power” and to always identify, like Jesus, with the marginalized of society. In the context of Trinity’s South Side neighborhood, where about 20 percent of residents are on welfare and the same number are unemployed, the church and its messenger were rarely controversial.

But now, in the larger context of Obama’s run for the Democratic nomination, they are. Last Thursday, snippets of a few of Wright’s more incendiary sermons circulated online, including one in which the pastor calls out Hillary Clinton for being part of the white establishment—”Hillary ain’t never been called a n–––––”—and another in which the pastor says, “God damn America … for killing innocent people.” He also calls the 9/11 attacks “America’s chickens coming home to roost.” The next day Obama released a statement about Wright on the Huffington Post. “I vehemently disagree and strongly condemn the statements that have been the subject of this controversy,” he wrote. He said further that he hadn’t been in the room when the offending comments were made and that he and his family looked forward to continuing their relationship to the church through its new pastor. Later, a spokesman announced that Wright would no longer serve the campaign in any advisory capacity.

Still, the clips triggered unease among whites, reopened divisions within the black community and provoked politically loaded questions about the nature of Obama’s relationship with Wright. Obama has said he found his Christianity at Trinity, and he credits the title of his book “The Audacity of Hope” to a sermon he heard Wright preach. Wright married the Obamas and baptized both their children. But the senator has tried throughout his campaign to distance himself from some of Wright’s more controversial statements, notably Wright’s praise of Nation of Islam Minister Louis Farrakhan. (Wright is like “an old uncle who sometimes will say things I don’t agree with,” Obama has said.) When pressed, Obama said at the last Democratic debate that he would reject and denounce Farrakhan’s inflammatory rhetoric.

Always a volatile combination, race and politics is particularly vexing for Obama, who, with his message of unity, hopes to transcend it all. The Wright and Farrakhan controversies force voters to look at Obama through the lens of their racial or cultural identity, and in a tightly contested race, Obama can’t afford to alienate anybody. The question for him now is whether his connection to Wright will hurt his ability to appeal to the best in people.

Wright declined to be interviewed, but on a recent Sunday morning between services, Moss spoke to NEWSWEEK. Trinity has been mischaracterized by the press, he says: the church is “very much in the traditional vein of the African-American church. Caring for seniors, loving our young people, and the focus on Christ and the cross is central to this church.”

Trinity was founded in 1961, the first black church in the United Church of Christ. (UCC members are Congregationalists, mainline Protestants who trace their history to John Cotton and the Puritans of New England.) The earliest members of Trinity were “teachers, people with middle-class jobs, resistant to doing anything radical in terms of justice,” says church historian Julia Speller, a professor at Chicago Theological Seminary and a member of Trinity. But as the 1970s dawned, values within the church began to change. According to Speller’s book “Walkin’ the Talk,” the congregation was beginning to believe that it couldn’t continue to do Christ’s work and not speak out against racism and injustice. What Wright gave the congregation, Speller says, was a “sense of beauty about who they were.” In 1978, Wright broke ground on a new sanctuary big enough to hold 900 people. In 1994, he built the existing one, which seats 2,500.

As a leader, Wright defied convention at every turn. In an interview with the Chicago Tribune last year, he recalled a time during the 1970s when the UCC decided to ordain gay and lesbian clergy. At its annual meeting, sensitive to the historic discomfort some blacks have with homosexuality, gay leaders reached out to black pastors. At that session, Wright heard the testimony of a gay Christian and, he said, he had a conversion experience on gay rights. He started one of the first AIDS ministries on the South Side and a singles group for Trinity gays and lesbians—a subject that still rankles some of the more conservative Trinity members, says Dwight Hopkins, a theology professor at the University of Chicago and a church member.

Barack Obama walked into Trinity when he was 27. He was a secular person, raised by a mother who would now be called “spiritual, not religious.” According to “The Audacity of Hope,” he realized that his secular upbringing was hurting his work as a community organizer. It was keeping him at a distance from the religious people he was trying to help. In “Dreams From My Father,” Obama describes the feeling he had when he heard Wright preach: “I imagined the stories of ordinary black people merging with the stories of David and Goliath, Moses and Pharaoh, the Christians in the lion’s den, Ezekiel’s field of dry bones. Those stories—of survival, and freedom, and hope—became our story, my story.”

In the African-American church tradition, pastors rely frequently on the stories of the Old Testament—stories of liberation and struggle—to reach their people. “The Audacity to Hope,” the Wright sermon that so inspired Obama, is a discussion of the Biblical character Hannah, who, though she was barren, prayed for a child. Wright uses Hannah as a metaphor for the black people who pray for deliverance even though it seems unattainable.

Friends of the church like to speculate about what, exactly, drew Obama in. Hopkins thinks it’s the erudition of the preachers. “Historically, African-American churches have had a strong anti-intellectual bent. There’s a saying, ‘Too much learning blocks the burning.’ Trinity has the learning and the burning.” But Melissa Harris-Lacewell thinks it’s something else, a connection to the black experience that Obama lacked as a child. “I really see Trinity for Barack as being part of his continuing adult choice to be a black man,” says Harris-Lacewell, who attended Trinity for a time and is now a professor at Princeton.

In the lobby before the 11 o’clock service on a recent Sunday, people mingle, chatter, hug and kiss. In the sanctuary, the 300-member gospel choir is overpowering; the soloists outclass anything on “American Idol.” When Moss, who is 37, starts preaching, the congregation rises to its feet. On this particular Sunday, Moss exhorts the congregation to pause when it can and, like Moses’ sister, Miriam, praise God for its blessings. “Excuse me,” he shouts, “I just have to praise the Lord.” A generation younger than Wright, Moss does not have the same rough edges. A former track star, he peppers his sermons with references to athletes and hip-hop artists; his mission, he says, is to reach out to the young people on the South Side who are unchurched.

Neither Moss nor anyone connected with the church will distance themselves publicly from Wright—nor will they rebuke their pastor for praising Farrakhan. (Last week, while commentators were calling Wright a “racialist,” the black church community stood by him. “Some of us wish we had the nerve that Jeremiah had,” says James Forbes, senior minister emeritus of Riverside Church in Manhattan.) Last fall, in an article in a magazine linked to Trinity, Wright lauded Farrakhan as a giant of the African-American religious experience. On the South Side, where all religious leaders are committed to keeping black men off drugs and out of prison, they have to work together, explains Moss. “We approach all people with unconditional love,” Moss tells NEWSWEEK. “[Farrakhan] is a neighbor in our community.”

Trinity members point out that Obama is not the first presidential candidate to have an alliance with a controversial minister, nor is he the first to have a connection, however tenuous, to Farrakhan. In 1996, while running for re-election, Bill Clinton sent out a mass mailing to friends and prospective donors—including one to the Nation of Islam. In it, he invited Claudette Muhammad, who at the time was chief of protocol, to be on his steering committee. “It is my way of saying thank you for your past friendship and it is my way of asking you to join me in this new campaign,” he wrote. Muhammad reprinted the letter in a memoir; a spokesman for Clinton declined to comment.

A member of Trinity since she was a teenager, Speller, of the Chicago Theological Seminary, is anguished over the scrutiny her church is facing. When asked whether there’s a double standard at her church about hate talk—is hate talk OK when directed at some groups, but not at others?—she pauses. The context here is Farrakhan, but in light of Wright’s video clips, her answer fits: “Is there an assumption that because of the hate talk, nothing good can come from him? And if there is that assumption, is it a fair assumption?” Fair or not, it’s one Barack Obama is going to have to contend with.

URL: http://www.newsweek.com/id/123604

Obama’s Speech Driven by Necessity
By Dan Balz
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, March 20, 2008; A04

The pattern in Campaign 2008 is that nothing lasts; nothing has a shelf life of more than half a day. Cable and the Internet simply churn information too quickly. In this age of the continuous news cycle, the new pushes out the old regardless of significance or importance.

In that context, it is worth returning to Sen. Barack Obama’s Tuesday speech on race and the Rev. Jeremiah A. Wright Jr., a speech and a subject not likely to disappear anytime soon. The question is which will last longer — Obama’s eloquent words about racial divisions and reconciliation or questions about his relationship with a man whose words have shocked the country.

In so many ways, Obama’s speech was remarkable: ambitious, lofty, gritty, honest and unnerving. In tone and substance, and in the challenge he laid down to the country about the need to somehow move beyond the racial stalemate, it was the kind of speech Americans should expect of a presidential candidate or a president.

Obama (Ill.) was uniquely equipped to give this speech. As the child of a mixed-race couple — a black Kenyan father who abandoned his wife and young son, and a white American mother who raised him with the help of her Kansas parents — he has struggled with this topic his entire life. His emergence in this presidential campaign is in no small measure the result of successfully making that journey.

Obama has lived in black and white throughout his life, and it seemed as if everything he had seen and absorbed and internalized about the divisions between the races went into what he said on Tuesday at the National Constitution Center in Philadelphia. As he has shown at other moments in the campaign, his gifts of intelligence, of reasoning and of language are considerable. Both what he said about race and the way in which he said it showed political and intellectual heft. Which is why the address has drawn considerable praise, as a model of what political rhetoric should seek to attain.

But, at heart, this was a speech designed for a political purpose, and Obama may have received more credit than he deserves for taking up the subject. Sitting in the small auditorium on Tuesday, watching Obama speak in what seemed like deliberately flat and unemotional tones, there was no way to think about the address as other than a political rescue mission. And on that there is no simple verdict, only lingering questions.

Obama said that the politically easy thing would be to hope that the firestorm triggered by video excerpts from Wright’s sermons would somehow fade away. Instead, he said, the Wright controversy provided the pretext for — even demanded! — a more honest confrontation of the racial divisions that persist and a more open-minded understanding by whites and blacks of why bitterness and anger exist on each side of that divide.

Obama obviously knew better than to pretend that the ugly controversy would somehow disappear. Wright, in fact, had created the most serious crisis Obama has faced in this campaign, and no amount of wishing would change that fact. The candidate rightly understood the threat to his candidacy and immediately told his advisers that he wanted to deliver a major speech on the subject. By enlarging the discussion, he hoped to defuse what was most dangerous to his political aspirations: his long association with a prominent figure who has said things that many Americans — white and black — find repulsive.

Democratic strategists see the dangers ahead for Obama. While not lethal to his hopes of winning the Democratic nomination or the presidency, they say, the damage could be lasting. “This has tarnished Obama’s image, though certainly not in a fatal way, and we will see it used by the GOP repeatedly if he is the nominee,” one strategist said in an e-mail on Wednesday. “At the end of the day, I believe whoever the Democratic nominee is will win, but those who think that, if Obama is the nominee, he won’t have Clinton-like negatives by Election Day are naive. This whole episode underlines that point.”

Another Democratic strategist offered this thought late Tuesday. The speech was one of the best ever given on the topic of race in America, he noted, but the controversy over Wright will dog Obama in a general election campaign and could hurt him in the nomination battle, depending on how superdelegates react to it and weigh whether Obama or Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (N.Y.) would be the stronger nominee against Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.).

Still another simply noted that Obama and his campaign team will need to return to this problem, as good as the speech may have been. In other words, it is not going away.

What cannot be known at this point is how the episode is resonating around the country among independents or those who were once called Reagan Democrats. Has Obama reached them in a way that inspires their confidence that he is perhaps uniquely equipped not just to start a conversation but to lead the country to a new, if still imperfect, place in racial relations? Or has he simply raised doubts among them about who he is?

What made Tuesday’s speech so difficult for Obama was the challenge of trying to speak through the anger — the anger of Wright’s words and the anger among those now first exposed to them — and move the country and the conversation to a different level. That was doubly difficult because his relationship with Wright is so personal that trying to explain Wright was not enough; he also had to explain something about himself. Rhetorically, he accomplished it, but it is not certain by any means that he did the same politically.

Obama’s hope is that what would be lasting from this experience would be a renewed effort by the country to speak with honesty and goodwill about the state of race relations. History suggests it may quickly tire of taking on something that arduous. The danger is that what might last are the images of his Chicago pastor — edited and reedited into television ads, YouTube videos and an endless stream of e-mails delivered quietly into the computers of millions of Americans. That would be good neither for Obama nor for the goals he talked about on Tuesday.

Cal Thomas
Tribune Media Services
March 18, 2008

In his several explanations and denunciations of his longtime pastor, Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama asks us to believe that he never heard any of the sermons in which the Rev. Jeremiah Wright asked God to damn America.

Neither was he present, he says, for the Rev. Wright’s message in which he said America got what it deserved on Sept. 11 because we bombed Hiroshima and Nagasaki to end World War II and have bombed other countries.

He apparently also missed the one about how America created AIDS. The implication appears to have been that it was a plot to wipe out blacks because the disease disproportionately affects African Americans.

Other church members must have told Obama what the Rev. Wright said, or he could have viewed the sermon on the church’s Web site. It appears many others besides just the Rev. Wright share this point of view. If one looks at the video, church members are standing, shouting approval and applauding. This is not one man speaking for himself. From the reaction, one can fairly conclude he is speaking for most, if not all, of the congregation. But not for Barack Obama, he says.

A statement issued by the church Sunday accused critics of attacking “the legacy of the African-American Church.” That is like excusing racism in some Southern white churches 50 years ago because of a “legacy” of bigotry. Hate from a preacher – black or white – can never be justified.

I have attended enough churches over the years that if I missed a Sunday service at which the pastor had said something as incendiary as the Rev. Wright, I would have heard about it and done more than denounce it. I would have left that church. Obama says the Rev. Wright is a “Bible scholar” and has spoken at seminaries around the country. He specifically mentioned Union Theological Seminary, which is theologically and politically liberal. Liberal seminaries teach a “social gospel” that is more social than gospel and more the earthly agenda of the Democratic Party than the Kingdom of God.

As the left attempts to peel off religious voters from their ties with the Republican Party, which has used and abused them, they are encountering some of the same pitfalls experienced by conservatives. These include outrageous statements from their own preachers. In the ’60s, some conservative preachers denounced Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., calling him a fellow traveler with communists. They opposed integration as “unbiblical.” In the late ’70s, they began a too-close association with Republican politicians who were all too happy to have their votes, but advanced little of their agenda, either because they could not, or because they would not.

The voice that black people should be listening to is not the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, but Bill Cosby. At Jesse Jackson’s 33rd annual Rainbow/PUSH Coalition conference in Chicago in 2004, and at many other venues, Cosby called on his fellow blacks to stop blaming the “white man” for their problems. Cosby suggested most of the problems in black America are caused by “what we are doing to ourselves.”

This is the attitude that appeals to others, especially whites, and makes them want to help poor blacks escape poverty. Blaming whites for black problems may empower the speakers, but it repels people who genuinely want to assist the disadvantaged.

Obama says the Rev. Wright is no longer among his campaign’s “spiritual advisers.” Obama should not be asked which of the Rev. Wright’s outrageous statements he disagrees with, but rather which ones he does agree with. That Obama remains a member in good standing of Trinity United Church of Christ indicates that he prefers the company of many people who have demonstrated that they believe what their pastor has said.

The religious left will get no further than the religious right in its attempt to use government and political power rather than the power of God. Political power can only empower itself and that is not real power. As with the right, the religious left will sully its primary message in favor of another kingdom (the world) and another king (a presidential candidate), which violates several biblical admonitions. By rejecting those admonitions, they are setting themselves up for frustration, disappointment and failure.

The Rev. Jeremiah Wright, shown at a funeral in 2000, has been been a source of controversy for the Obama campaign. Associated Press (File Associated Press )

Peter Slevin
Washington Post
March 15, 2008

CHICAGO – The Rev. Jeremiah A. Wright Jr., the former pastor at Chicago’s Trinity United Church of Christ, is no longer affiliated with Sen. Barack Obama’s presidential campaign after coming under fresh scrutiny Friday for controversial comments that the Illinois Democrat called “inflammatory and appalling.”

Wright, who presided over Obama’s wedding and supplied the “audacity of hope” line that has become a signature for the candidate, has been a source of controversy for Obama for some time because of the often inflammatory nature of some of his sermons.

Last month in a meeting with Jewish leaders in Cleveland, Obama said Wright was “like an old uncle who sometimes will say things that I don’t agree with.”

But more examples of Wright’s rhetoric surfaced this week, including a speech Wright delivered in 2006 at Howard University in which he said: “Racism is how this country was founded and how this country was run. … We believe in white supremacy and black inferiority and believe it more than we believe in God.” The speech was quoted in an op-ed article in the Wall Street Journal.

In a letter to the Huffington Post Web site Friday afternoon – and later in an interview on MSNBC – Obama went much further than he previously had gone in distancing himself from Wright. “All of the statements that have been the subject of controversy are ones that I vehemently condemn,” Obama wrote. “They in no way reflect my attitudes and directly contradict my profound love for this country.”

In the MSNBC interview, Obama said he did not “repudiate the man” and added: “I have known him 17 years. He helped bring me to Jesus and helped bring me to church. He and I have a relationship – he’s like an uncle who talked to me, not about political things and social views, but faith and God and family. He’s somebody who is widely respected throughout Chicago and throughout the country for many of the things he’s done not only as a pastor but a preacher.”

But earlier in the evening Obama campaign spokesman Tommy Vietor had alerted reporters that Wright will no longer serve in an unpaid and largely ceremonial role on an Obama campaign leadership committee. “Rev. Wright is no longer serving on the African American Religious Leadership Committee,” Vietor wrote in an e-mail.

Stephanie Desmon
Baltimore Sun
March 12, 2008

About 1 in 4 teenage girls in the United States – and nearly half of black girls – has at least one sexually transmitted disease, according to a study released Tuesday, providing the first national snapshot of infection rates among this age group.

Those numbers translate into an estimated 3.2 million adolescent females infected with one of the four most common STDs – many of whom may not even know they have a disease or that they are passing it to their sex partners.

“What we found is alarming,” said Dr. Sara Forhan, a researcher with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the study’s lead author. “This means that far too many young women are at risk for the serious health effects of untreated STDs, including infertility and cervical cancer.”

The study’s authors analyzed data on 838 girls between ages 14 and 19 who participated in the 2003-04 National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey, an annual study that assesses a broad range of health issues. For the analysis, the teens were tested for human papillomavirus (HPV), chlamydia, trichomoniasis and herpes. By far, the most common sexually transmitted disease was HPV. Of those infected, 15 percent had more than one STD.

“It shows that what people have always suspected is true,” said Dr. Emily J. Erbelding, an infectious-diseases specialist at Johns Hopkins Bayview Medical Center. “Sexually transmitted infections have been called a hidden epidemic, because a lot of these conditions are going to be asymptotic when they’re diagnosed, but they’re highly common.”

The overall figures could be slightly higher, because other sexually transmitted diseases – syphilis, HIV and gonorrhea – were not included in the study, although experts say the prevalence is low for those infections among adolescents. The study did not include teenage boys.

Forhan said she was surprised to see how readily the risk to young women appears. Of those in the study who said they had one sexual partner in their lifetime, the prevalence of STDs was 20 percent, she said.

While parents may be surprised by the study, it’s a reflection of what doctors have been seeing in their practices in recent years, said Dr. Ligia Peralta, chief of the Division of Adolescent and Young Adult Medicine at the University of Maryland Hospital for Children in Baltimore. In a small study done among girls at in her university clinic in 2000, primarily black teens, 90 percent of the sexually active teens had HPV.

She called the CDC study “critical information for parents” and encouraged them to use this knowledge to be sure their daughters are being properly screened and taught about protection and prevention. She said parents need to know that the average age of a girl’s first sexual intercourse is 15.

Leonard Pitts Jr.
The Miami Herald
January 28, 2008

Barack Obama is not a Muslim.

We know this because he has told us so.

We know it because there is no credible evidence to suggest otherwise.

We know it despite a campaign of lies and whispers from various bloggers, pundits and head cases.

Barack Obama is not a Muslim. But, what if he was?

Same guy, same charisma, same inspirational idealism. But also, a Muslim. Not a crazy Muslim. Not a guy prone to strapping bombs to his chest in hopes of meeting virgins in heaven. A Kareem Abdul-Jabbar-type Muslim. A Dave Chappelle, Ahmad Rashad, Shaquille O’Neal-type Muslim. A guy you like and admire who just happened to be, you know … Muslim.

Would it matter? Should it?

The question bears answering because of the creepy, are-you-now-or-have-you-ever-been attitude toward Islam that seems to be seeping into the public dialogue lately. As in that campaign of lies and whispers that keeps showing up in my inbox – claims that Obama won’t salute the flag, took his oath of office on a Quran, belongs to a terror cell and other assorted idiocy.

NBC News anchor Brian Williams has apparently been getting the same e-mails. In moderating a recent Democratic debate, he asked Obama about rumors “that you are trying to hide the fact that you’re a Muslim …”

The senator laughed a heard-that-a-few-times-before laugh. Then he replied that he is a Christian, that he is a victim of Internet rumor and that he trusts the American people to “sort out the lies from the truth.”

What bothered me is that, by its phrasing, Williams’ question presupposed there is something wrong with being a Muslim. And Obama’s answer left the presupposition unaddressed.

What if he was a Muslim? What then?

A 2007 Pew Research Center survey found that 43 percent of us have a favorable opinion of Muslims (make it Muslim-Americans and the number rises to 53 percent). That may sound not so bad, except when you compare it to favorable ratings of other religious groups. Jews, for instance, are at 76 percent. Even evangelical Christians manage 60. And that ranking for Muslims represents a 5 point drop since 2004.

It’s no mystery why the nation’s opinion of Muslims is becoming less favorable. In a word, terrorism. And frankly, Americans are right to fear Muslim fanatics who embrace violence as a means of getting what they want.

But see, the key word there is not Muslim. It’s fanatic. Yet some of us still think Muslim is the brand name for crazy. Me, I think the only difference between religious fanatics here and in the Middle East is that Middle Eastern nations tend to be theocratic (i.e., the word of the holy book has the force of law) and to be intolerant – sometimes, violently so – of dissent. So no one dares tell them no.

But if Pat Robertson, to name an American Christian fanatic not quite at random, had the force of law behind him and the ability to silence those who disagree, don’t you think he would be as scary as the scariest ayatollah in Iran?

I do. That’s why I would never want him to be president. That’s not quite the same as saying I’d never want a Christian to be president. I just prefer my presidents – regardless of their religion – reasonable. And sane. That seems a fair standard.

Yet it’s a standard some of us now discard. The ongoing whisper campaign against Obama, against his very American-ness, is a shameful appeal to ignorance and fear. Against that, I offer a simple statement the world’s most famous and well-loved follower of Islam made just after the Sept. 11 attacks.

“I am a Muslim,” said Muhammad Ali. “I am an American.”

That says it all. Or at least, it should.

Cal Thomas
January 19, 2008

Thirty-five years after the Supreme Court unilaterally struck down state laws restricting abortion, the cost of that decision continues to increase our moral deficit, which will have far greater (and eternal) consequences than the impact from economic challenges during a possible recession.

Depending on how one counts the number of abortions per year since 1973, more than 50 million people who might have been are not. These were people who, regardless of the circumstances of the women who carried them, had the potential to contribute to the country and to the world. But now they cannot, because they are not. Would we be fighting the battle over immigration had we not rid ourselves of a generation of humans who likely would have done the work for which we are now importing illegal aliens? Actions have consequences.

Roe and its companion case, Doe v. Bolton, took the question of endowment of life by “our Creator” and placed it in the hands of individuals. History has shown what happens when humanity seizes such power for itself: political dictatorships, eugenics and scientific experiments unrestrained by any moorings to a moral code. Each becomes her and his own god; each becomes a taker of life, rather than a giver, inverting the creation model into one of destruction and transforming the pregnant woman from life-giver to life-taker.

The social restructuring unleashed by the judicial fiat that was Roe created a cultural fissure that remains today. We moved quickly from acknowledgement of a right to live, to assertions of a right to die. In her essay “The Women of Roe v. Wade,” Harvard professor Mary Ann Glendon calls to mind the novelist Walker Percy who prophesied two years before Roe that “Qualitarian Centers” would spring up, “where, as one of Percy’s characters explained, doctors would respect ‘the right of an unwanted child not to have to endure a life of suffering.’ ” State governments, Percy suggested, might eventually recognize a right to die. Arrangements would be made for the sick and elderly to push a button that would transport them to a “happy death” in Michigan, a “joyful exitus” in New York, or a “luanalu-hai” in Hawaii. Percy’s fiction increasingly resembles fact.

Abortion on demand cannot be seen in isolation from social breakdown. In 1973, near the end of the Vietnam War and the approaching resignation of President Nixon two years later, the focus on self, pleasure and convenience by Baby Boomers was at its height. Marriages easily dissolved as “no fault” divorce laws were passed; cohabitation and out-of-wedlock births were on the rise; “unwanted babies” (who were labeled “products of conception” to make it easier to deny the obvious) became an impediment to the pursuit of pleasure and material gain.

Abortion was not a cause, but a reflection of our decadence and deviancy. One does not begin to kill babies until other dominoes have fallen. And once they have fallen, it becomes difficult to set them aright because to do so would require an admission of something so horrible that those responsible for this fetal holocaust would have to acknowledge their sin and repent of it. Such a thing is not a character trait of this most pampered generation.

In recent years there have been signs that things may be – if not turning around – then moderating. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, abortion numbers have declined steadily since 1990, from a high of 1.2 million annually to fewer than 900,000. This is due, I believe, to the unrelenting commitment of the pro-life movement through pregnancy help centers, information by Internet, marches and what appears to be a growing pro-life consensus among many women who reject the cavalier attitudes about life displayed by their mothers’ feminist generation.

Hollywood has infused a pro-life subplot into films such as “Juno” and “Knocked Up.” Might the “old-fashioned” become the new fashion?

Politicians and judges could help bury Roe by requiring that pregnant women receive complete information about the nature of the life within them, including being required to view sonograms before electing abortion. This would follow truth-in-labeling and truth-in-lending laws by fully informing and empowering women. Such an approach would satisfy the liberal demand to keep abortion “safe and legal” and the pro-life desire to make them rare.

After 35 years of slaughtering our young, isn’t it time to stop? That child born in 1973 could be a parent now. There are children who could have been born today. Thirty-five years of killing has diminished and corrupted us all. Let’s summon the moral courage to stop it for our sake … and for theirs.

By Jay Newton-Small

ELECTORAL EXPLAINER

Frigid temperatures, college-football bowl games, post-New Year’s Eve lethargy–the Iowa caucuses have a lot going against them this election cycle. Still, despite months of electoral-calendar one-upmanship, the Hawkeye State held onto its status as the nation’s first presidential matchup by moving its caucuses from Jan. 14 to Jan. 3. The Iowa contests first achieved national prominence in 1972 and ‘76. Since then, they have provided momentum to many a trailing candidate while halting the progress of more than a few presumed front runners.

 How They Work – The Iowa Caucuses

Despite the state’s reputation as a hotbed of local political participation, only about 200,000 Iowans (6-7% of the state’s population) normally participate in the caucuses. They gather in school auditoriums, churches and homes to publicly hash out their picks.

The Republican caucuses are straightforward: the candidate who receives the majority vote in each precinct wins all of that precinct’s delegates.

The Democratic process is more complicated. Caucus attendees gather in separate parts of the room in candidate “preference groups.” Any group with less than 15% of the total participants is deemed “nonviable.”

A “realignment” process follows, during which those in “nonviable” groups abandon their candidate for another or try to cajole others to join them (thereby bringing them to 15%).

Once each remaining group has 15% or more of the participants, a complicated formula is used to determine how many delegates each candidate receives.

1972 Despite coming in second to Ed Muskie, Senator George McGovern used a solid Iowa showing to eventually win the Democratic nomination.

1976 “Uncommitted” beat Jimmy Carter by 10 points. Nonetheless, intense campaigning in Iowa put the former unknown on the road to the White House.

1992 Democrats declined to campaign against Iowa Senator Tom Harkin, who handily won his state but later became one of the first candidates to drop out.

2004 Front runner Howard Dean entered Iowa with an aura of inevitability. Then came third place, the “Dean Scream” and, well … you remember the rest.

Campaign Insider. From Coach K and Green Bay to the Obama campaign

The love who spends each day by Barack Obama’s side, attending to his every need, isn’t his wife Michelle. It’s Reggie Love, a 6-ft. 4-in. former Duke basketball and pro-football player who has worked with Obama for the past two years, first as a staff assistant and now as his personal aide.

Love, 25, starts most days at 6 a.m., working out in the gym with the Illinois Senator. He shadows Obama through a grueling schedule of campaign events, fund raisers and policy meetings, keeping the candidate fueled and on time. “Anything that comes up, you’ve just got to deal with,” says Love. “There isn’t a real good job description.”

He played football and basketball at Duke and graduated with degrees in political science and public policy after a brief stint as a wide receiver for the Green Bay Packers. While waiting to start a training program for Goldman Sachs, Love looked around Washington for an unpaid internship and ended up with the job as Obama’s assistant.

Out on the campaign trail, Obama and Love sometimes challenge local police or fire departments to pickup games. In a game they played in early July, the two were on opposing teams, and Obama’s team won. “For two weeks,” says Love, “they were all like, ‘I thought you played at Duke. I thought you had game.’” At their next game, in Sioux City, Iowa, Love stopped holding back, vowing “Never again.”

GOD-O-METER

X-mas (Air) Time

‘Tis the season for religious political ads. Conservative Evangelicals are a house divided when it comes to supporting a GOP candidate, but Mike Huckabee continues his efforts to win them over. In a new TV spot, the pastor candidate claims to put politics aside in the spirit of the holiday, announcing “What really matters is the celebration of the birth of Christ.” His campaign insists X-mas isn’t an event to spin, but with a tree in the background–and a cross, formed by the intersection of shelves–Huckabee is positioning himself as the friendly, faithful candidate, vs. Mitt Romney and his attack ads.

For daily God-o-Meter readings covering all the presidential candidates, visit beliefnet.com

[SECULARIST=1]

[THEOCRAT=10]

Huckabee’s Score:   9

By Jon Meacham

NEWSWEEK

Updated: 4:59 PM ET Dec 8, 2007

The speech was written, the stagecraft set. Last Wednesday evening, about 12 hours before he was to speak on faith and public life as the guest of George H.W. Bush in College Station, Texas, Mitt Romney was musing aloud about the task before him. The former Massachusetts governor was happy with the text, which had taken him nearly a week to write and polish: it was rife with allusions to the Founding Fathers and to what Romney called “our grand tradition of religious tolerance and liberty.” He was thrilled, too, that the 41st president was going to introduce him; Romney would not have chosen the Bush library as the venue if the senior President Bush had declined to be there. (Bush 41 offered no endorsement, but tacit benediction—and, before the morning speech, cold cereal, which Romney declined, leaving the former president to have a bowl by himself while the governor drank a caffeine-free Diet Coke.) “My view is that when a person of faith is running for office—particularly a person of a faith you may not be familiar with—there are some questions that are legitimate,” Romney said from the road in Houston. Would the authorities of a president’s church exert influence on White House decisions? Would a president of a given faith put his country’s traditions and laws above those of his church’s? “Those are real issues, and people have a right to hear a candidate address them,” Romney said. But there had to be a line drawn somewhere: “There are some particular doctrines, some theological concepts, that we don’t need to go into, no matter what faith it is.”

Or so Romney hopes—and, given the poll numbers in Iowa, which votes in three weeks, perhaps prays. At almost exactly the same hour on Wednesday, Mike Huckabee was spending a rare night at home in Little Rock, packing for a campaign trip to South Carolina. In a telephone interview with NEWSWEEK’S Holly Bailey, Huckabee, an ordained Southern Baptist minister, declined to say whether he agreed with evangelical Christians who believe Mormonism is a heretical cult. “First of all, I don’t think it’s appropriate for me to start evaluating other religions,” Huckabee said. “The more I answer these questions, the more people want to say, ‘Ah, you describe yourself as a theologian,’ or ‘Oh, you’re the one who is setting yourself up as a judge of religions.’ I am damned if I do; I am damned if I don’t.”

Then he did. Asked if he thought Scriptural revelations from God ended when the Bible was completed, Huckabee said: “I don’t have any evidence or indication that he’s handed us a new book to add to the ones, the 66, that were canonized in 325 A.D. … It was a careful process that adopted those books. That was something I did study in college and seminary … the process by which we ended up with those books. I don’t know that there’s any other books.”

Which no doubt comes as a surprise to the world’s nearly 13 million members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, who, like Romney, believe that God did indeed reveal another text in 19th-century America, the Book of Mormon. For Huckabee, such a disagreement in a matter of faith can be no small thing. In an ad, he is styled as a “Christian leader” and says, “Faith doesn’t just influence me; it really defines me.”

So it has come to this: the 2008 Republican Iowa caucuses have descended into a kind of holy war. The clash centers on issues that are, in Saint Augustine’s phrase, ever ancient, ever new: the nature of God, the disposition of power and the sanctity of conscience. The skirmish pits Huckabee against Romney in a story of hardball politics and high-minded history, of shadowy slurs and noble principles.

Fights about faith and politics have been with us always. In 1800, there were advertisements saying voters could have “Adams and God, or Jefferson and no God.” Andrew Jackson resisted the formation of a “Christian Party in Politics.” Abraham Lincoln buried a proposed constitutional amendment designed to declare the nation’s dependence on, and allegiance to, Jesus. A century ago, in the 1908 campaign, William Howard Taft, a Unitarian, was attacked as an apostate by supporters of William Jennings Bryan, an evangelical Christian. “Think of the United States with a President who does not believe that Jesus Christ was the Son of God, but looks upon our immaculate Savior as a … low, cunning imposter!” The Pentecostal Herald said in July 1908.

Three weeks away from the Jan. 3 Iowa caucuses, it seems clear that we have not moved very far beyond where we were in the Taft-Bryan race. In November, voters in Iowa and in New Hampshire received mysterious calls known as push polls, in which the questioner “pushes” an often hostile point about a candidate in the guise of asking a polling question. According to The Boston Globe, Ralph Watts, a state representative in Iowa who backs Romney, got just such a call. The voice on the other end of the line said: “Some people say the Mormon Church is a cult; would that make you more or less likely to vote for Mitt Romney?” Then came favorable questions about John McCain. (The calls stopped once they were reported in the press; they have been traced to a Utah-based company. The McCain, Huckabee and Giuliani campaigns deny any involvement, and the New Hampshire attorney general is investigating.)

The calls are the most egregious manifestations of a larger anti-Mormon bias. Romney had long resisted making a big speech on religion; he and his advisers believed it would only attract attention to a complicated and distracting issue. The new NEWSWEEK Poll of Iowa voters shows why he had to change his mind: Huckabee is now leading Romney among likely caucus-goers, 39 percent to 17 percent. Among evangelicals—who are likely to make up roughly 40 percent of the vote on Jan. 3—Huckabee is ahead 47 percent to 14 percent. Among non-evangelicals, the two are tied at 24 percent each. Half of evangelical voters say they do not consider Mormons to be Christians, and a third say Romney’s faith makes them less likely to support him.

In College Station, Romney avoided explaining the particulars of the Mormon Church, focusing instead on the broader history of faith and politics in America. “Any believer in religious freedom, any person who has knelt in prayer to the Almighty, has a friend and ally in me,” he said. “And so it is for hundreds of millions of our countrymen: we do not insist on a single strain of religion—rather, we welcome our nation’s symphony of faith.” In articulating the Gospel According to Mitt, though, he never explicitly endorsed a critical element of the American tradition: the right of any person not to believe.

In a telephone interview with Romney on Friday evening, I asked him why he had, to many ears, seemed to fail to reach out to those of no religious belief: “I was struck that you did not explicitly extend the definition of religious liberty to those who believe nothing at all …”

“I don’t think I defined religious liberty,” Romney replied. “I think it spoke for itself … but of course it includes all, all forms of personal conviction.”

“Or the lack thereof?”

“Yeah, the lack …” He paused. “But—well, the people who don’t have a particular faith have a personal conviction. I said all forms of personal conviction. And personal conviction includes a sense of right and wrong and any host of beliefs someone might have. Obviously in this nation our religious liberty includes the ability to believe or not believe.”

So, in the end, there it was, but it took a while. Not surprisingly, the politics of the primary season probably kept him from making himself clear from the start: to offer a hand to atheists and agnostics, while presidential, would do him little good, and possibly much harm, with the Iowa voters he needs.

Romney also conflated religion and morality, quoting John Adams, who said, “We have no government armed with power capable of contending with human passions unbridled by morality and religion … Our constitution was made for a moral and religious people.” True—but note that Adams spoke of morality and religion as separate things. Acts of charity and grace need not be religiously inspired; many are and many are not. Religious people can be intolerant, cruel and exclusionary; they can also be broad-minded, kind and welcoming. The same can be said of people who adhere to no religious faith.

After citing Adams, Romney said: “Freedom requires religion just as religion requires freedom.” The second part is an ancient theological tradition: without free will faith is not faith but coercion. The first point, however, is arguable, for societies can be secular, free and successful. I asked Romney to explain his thinking. In sum, he believes a republic is dependent on the virtue of the people, the virtue of the people is dependent on morality, and that morality is dependent on religion. To support his case he (wisely) alluded to Washington’s Farewell Address, which says, “of all the dispositions and habits which lead to political prosperity, religion and morality are indispensable supports … let us with caution indulge the supposition that morality can be maintained without religion.” But Washington was simply raising a “caution,” and it is a mistake to think that one need be religious to be moral.

Romney would have been on safer ground had he said that America has always been largely religious and largely free, and that America’s religious traditions should fight for the freedom of all, if only out of self-interest. Without freedom of conscience, today’s tyrant could be tomorrow’s tyrannized, and the other way round. With freedom of conscience, we come closer to living out the promise Washington made in his 1790 letter to the Hebrew Congregation at Newport, R.I., in which he said that the government of the United States was “to give to bigotry no sanction … and to persecution no assistance.”

Romney’s failure to make a noble public stand for the rights of atheists and skeptics is tactically understandable if intellectually disappointing. The man he is now trailing in Iowa is smooth on the campaign circuit, appealing to conservative Christians without alienating other kinds of voters. How long this will last is an open question. Huckabee the front runner is only now beginning to face new scrutiny. A speech he gave in 1998 is likely to come up again. Addressing Southern Baptist pastors gathered at the Salt Palace Convention Center, Huckabee, then governor of Arkansas, said that he “got into politics because I knew government didn’t have the real answers, that real answers lie in accepting Jesus Christ into our lives … I hope we answer the alarm clock and take this nation back for Christ.”

Take this nation back for Christ: the phrase echoes the language of Jerry Falwell, who was against ministers’ mixing in politics when the subject was civil rights but changed his mind after the Roe decision in 1973. In a Moral Majority report, Falwell’s organization urged “an old-fashioned, God-honoring, Christ-exalting revival to turn America back to God.” Such talk was precisely what the Founders had hoped to avoid.

In truth, the separation of church and state—including a constitutional prohibition against a religious test for federal office—was essential to them, but they also understood that religion and politics were always going to be mixed up together. The critical thing was to manage this human reality, to minimize its ill effects and make the most of the possible good it could do. Led by Madison, the Founders were determined to make religion one of the many contending forces in the republican arena—forces that would check and balance one another.

The alternatives were—and are—bleak. To try to banish faith altogether would fail, for the religious would become martyrs, and religious belief is a perennial force in human affairs. (”All men,” said Homer, “need the gods.”) And to give faith a dominant role risked repeating the gloomy experience of the Old World and the worst parts of our Colonial history, a history checkered by theocracy and persecution from Jamestown to Massachusetts Bay.

Taken all in all, religion, like commerce and nationalism and so much else in history, has had its bright and dark hours. In 1808, Jacob Henry, a Jewish-American, was elected to the state legislature of North Carolina, which refused to seat him unless he was (a) a Protestant and (b) conceded the divine authority of the Old and New Testaments. Here is what Henry said to them: “Governments only concern the actions and conduct of man, and not his speculative notions. Who among us feels himself so exalted above his fellows as to have a right to dictate to them any mode of belief?”

Too many people do feel so exalted, which is why religious believers, who far outnumber those who do not believe, have a special obligation to be humble and gracious and respectful. John Jay, the chief justice and a warden of Trinity Church Wall Street in New York, was a devout Anglican, but he firmly understood what America was to be about: “Real Christians,” he said, “will abstain from violating the rights of others.” Or better yet, real Americans will abstain from violating those rights.

Last Thursday morning, his speech done, Romney and his family had a short visit with the Bushes, and then took their leave. The governor had closed his remarks with the image of the Continental Congress at prayer in Carpenters’ Hall in Philadelphia amid what John Adams called “the horrible rumor of the cannonade of Boston.” The delegates had argued over whether those of different denominations could pray together, but they were brought together when Sam Adams announced that he was “no bigot, and could hear a prayer from a gentleman of piety and virtue who was at the same time a friend to his country.” An Episcopal priest was summoned, and read the psalm assigned for the day: “Plead my cause, O Lord, with them that strive with me; fight against them that fight against me.” Back in Iowa, at war, one suspects it is a prayer that resonates with Romney.

Disparate Doctrines: Two Faiths in Conflict

The tension between evangelicals and Mormons is as old as the Mormon Church itself. While the two religions share similarly conservative social values, their beliefs clash when it comes to some of the most fundamental aspects of Christianity. The critical differences:

NEWSWEEK

Updated: 4:59 PM ET Dec 8, 2007

SCRIPTURE
Evangelical The New and Old Testaments of the Bible are the complete revelation of God’s holy word. Evangelicals regard the Bible as the ultimate and absolute religious authority.
Mormon Believe the Bible to be the word of God “as far as it is translated correctly.” They also consider “The Book of Mormon: Another Testament of Jesus Christ” and newer revelations to Joseph Smith and other prophets as Scripture.

HOLY TRINITY
Evangelical The Father, his Son (Jesus Christ) and the Holy Spirit are a single entity. Each has distinct attributes, but the three are undivided in essence or being. This is the traditional Christian conception of the Holy Trinity.
Mormon Heavenly Father, Jesus Christ and the Holy Ghost are physically separate and distinct entities with distinct roles, but act with a single purpose. Mormons typically refer to the Holy Trinity as the Godhead.

GOD
Evangelical God is a spirit without a human form. While Scripture may use humanlike characteristics to describe God, He is not human and does not have a physical body.
Mormon Like Jesus Christ, God has a humanlike body that is immortal and perfected. Mormons believe in eternal progression and that they may someday become gods.

SALVATION
Evangelical Comes when the individual develops a heartfelt faith in Jesus Christ. Salvation is not dependent on how one acted on Earth but rather on a relationship with Christ.
Mormon Comes through Jesus Christ for all people. After being resurrected, all will be judged, and according to the Plan of Salvation, their level of reward in the afterlife depends on how they lived their earthly life.

MORALITY
Evangelical Prohibits (or discourages) premarital sex and drunkenness. Moderate consumption of alcohol and tobacco is typically accepted by the evangelical churches. Strong emphasis on family values and community.
Mormon Expects complete abstinence from alcohol, tobacco, coffee and tea. The church also prohibits members from having sexual relations outside of marriage. Strong emphasis on family values and community.

SIZE OF CHURCH
Evangelical About 100 million Americans— a third of the population— are evangelical Protestants. (Evangelical population estimates vary by survey.)
Mormon Six million Americans belong to the Mormon Church, comprising about 2 percent of the population. Roughly a quarter of U.S. Mormons live in Utah; more than half live outside the U.S.

Kathleen Parker
Orlando Sentinel
December 8, 2007

Voters may not know any more about Mormonism than they did before Mitt Romney’s faith speech on Thursday, but they surely know more about what it means to be an American.

Romney’s much-anticipated address from the George H.W. Bush library at Texas A&M reminded Americans of some fundamental truths that often get lost in the guerrilla warfare of presidential politics.

He made two important points clear: Freedom and religious liberty are inextricably linked. And, though his religion informs his life, leaders of his church will not inform his decisions as president.

That second statement is essentially a reiteration of John F. Kennedy’s speech nearly 50 years ago when he had to assuage voters’ fears that he would be taking orders from the pope. Like Kennedy, Romney said his commitment is to the rule of law and the Constitution.

If Kennedy’s speech was an important landmark in American political history, Romney’s was surpassing. With heartfelt humility and poetic eloquence, he tracked the nation’s struggle with and for freedom.

He held up a mirror and, for the first time in a long while, Americans did not have to avert their gaze. They could see themselves reflected and be both proud and humbled by their country’s unique beauty.

That may be the most valuable result of Romney’s speech. He raised the bar by focusing on broad principles of religious freedom, rather than on the small details of doctrinal differences. In the process, he elevated everyone – even those not-so-deserving.

Disappointing many, no doubt, Romney steered clear of the details of Mormon belief and deprived the boxers-or-briefs crowd an answer to the Mormon undergarment question. This was smart for Romney, but it was also a gift to the American people – a gesture of mutual respect.

Where does one begin to defend one’s religious faith, anyway? And where does anyone draw the line? No religion can bear close scrutiny if we go literal. Who among Christians wants to explain the Immaculate Conception? A talking snake? The rather peculiar ritual of “grokking” Jesus by eating stale wafers and sipping cheap wine?

Romney effectively neutralized these questions with his recognition that all religions have their curiosities as well as their wonders. In a nod toward pluralism, Romney noted the things he loves about other religions – “the profound ceremony of the Catholic Mass, the approachability of God in the prayers of the evangelicals, the tenderness of spirit among the Pentecostals, the confident independence of the Lutherans, the ancient traditions of the Jews, unchanged through the ages, and the commitment to frequent prayer of the Muslims.”

Unapologetically, Romney said he wouldn’t disavow the faith of his fathers and if his campaign for president fails because of it, then “so be it.”

But why should he or anyone disavow his faith to run for president? How did that idea ever gain entry into the political arena of a country founded on the idea of religious liberty? Didn’t the earliest Americans die to secure that proposition and to codify it into law?

Romney’s clear attempt to assuage evangelical Christians that he and they are on the same page, if not always on the same scripture, may not satisfy some in the born-again camp. But those who resist Romney’s higher calling to true religious liberty might profit from a moment of introspection.

Who is to judge another’s faith? And by what standard has Romney’s religion failed in guiding what has clearly been an exemplary life?

The religious questions raised by Romney’s candidacy have intersected (by grace, some would say) with a time when Americans needed to review their nation’s founding principles and, in Romney’s words, appreciate “the profound implications of our tradition of religious liberty.”

As radical Islam seeks to impose theocratic tyranny – to convert by conquest – Americans can be grateful that, as Romney put it, reason and religion are allies in this country. But that relationship has always been a fragile marriage and this presidential election seems to be testing our resolve.

Perhaps it took someone more recently persecuted for his beliefs to remind us that “religious tolerance would be a shallow principle indeed if it were reserved only for faiths with which we agree.”

Indeed.

Or, as they say, amen.

By Dan Balz
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, December 7, 2007; A01

COLLEGE STATION, Tex., Dec. 6 — Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney, seeking to allay suspicions about his Mormon faith, pledged Thursday to serve the common good rather than a single religion if elected president.

“Let me assure you that no authorities of my church, or of any other church for that matter, will ever exert influence on presidential decisions,” Romney told an audience at George H.W. Bush’s presidential library. “Their authority is theirs, within the province of church affairs, and it ends where the affairs of the nation begin.”

The former Massachusetts governor, in a long-awaited speech that could be crucial to his hopes of winning the GOP nomination and the White House, went on to say that, as president, he would serve “no one religion, no one group, no one cause and no one interest.” He continued: “A president must serve only the common cause of the people of the United States.”

But Romney was equally emphatic in arguing that religion has a place in public life. Saying that the doctrine of separation of church and state has been carried too far, he said some people and institutions have pushed to remove “any acknowledgment of God” from the public domain. “It’s as if they’re intent on establishing a new religion in America — the religion of secularism,” he said. “They’re wrong.”

Romney’s address, which was widely compared to one that John F. Kennedy gave in Houston in 1960 as he was seeking to become the first Roman Catholic president, was the most important of his political career and came at a potential turning point in the wide-open Republican nomination battle. Romney has sought to cast himself as a committed conservative, but many polls have shown resistance, particularly among evangelical Christians, to a Mormon candidate.

Romney has counted on victories in Iowa and New Hampshire to launch a candidacy that has sometimes struggled for national recognition. But in Iowa he now faces growing competition for the votes of Christian conservatives from former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee, an ordained Baptist minister who has made his religious faith central to his candidacy.

As a result, Romney’s challenge here Thursday was different from Kennedy’s in 1960, and so was his speech. Like Kennedy, he sought to neutralize concerns that his church would in some way dictate his decisions as president. But unlike Kennedy, he needed to assure Christian conservatives that he shares their fundamental convictions and a determination not to see religion’s role in political life reduced.

The setting, the Bush library on the campus of Texas A&M University, conveyed a presidential aura to an event that was long debated inside the Romney campaign. Signifying the speech’s significance, the candidate was accompanied by his wife, Ann, and four of their sons.

Former president George H.W. Bush introduced Romney, and while he said he was not endorsing any candidate in the GOP race, he spoke warmly about Romney and his family.

The audience included several prominent religious leaders, including Richard Land, president of the Southern Baptist Convention’s Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission; Jay Sekulow of the American Center for Law and Justice; and the Rev. Lou Sheldon of the Traditional Values Coalition. Their immediate reactions were positive, with Land, speaking on CNN, saying Romney had done “a magnificent job.”

“His delivery was passionate and his message was inspirational,” Focus on the Family founder James Dobson said in a statement. “Whether it will answer all the questions and concerns of Evangelical Christian voters is yet to be determined, but the governor is to be commended for articulating the importance of our religious heritage as it relates to today.”

Family Research Council President Tony Perkins said Romney’s remarks “were well-delivered and he offered many compelling thoughts,” but like Dobson he warned that it “would be an illusion to think that any single speech could assuage every concern or end the thriving discussions Americans have about these issues.”

Romney will not know whether he succeeded in addressing those concerns until the first results come in on Jan. 3 in Iowa, where religious conservatives play a substantial role in the GOP caucuses. A more critical test for Romney will come Jan. 19 in South Carolina’s GOP primary, as Southern evangelicals have been seen as most resistant to his Mormon beliefs.

To those Christians, Romney offered a statement of his beliefs: “I believe that Jesus Christ is the son of God and the savior of mankind.” But he declined to attempt to demystify the teachings of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, as some had suggested he might have to do.

“There are some who would have a presidential candidate describe and explain his church’s distinctive doctrines,” he said. “To do so would enable the very religious test the founders prohibited in the Constitution. No candidate should become the spokesman for his faith. For if he becomes president, he will need the prayers of the people of all faiths.”

Romney, like Kennedy, said there should be no religious test for the presidency. “A person should not be elected because of his faith, nor should he be rejected because of his faith,” he said.

But he also explicitly declined to distance himself from his church. “I believe in my Mormon faith, and I endeavor to live by it,” he said. Should he lose because of that, “so be it,” he said, adding that he believes the American people prefer politicians who are true to their faith rather than “believers of convenience.”

One GOP strategist called that an unfortunate choice of words, given the charges that Romney changed his views on abortion and some other issues, adopting more conservative positions in preparation for his presidential campaign. “It lies at the core of why some Republicans and conservatives have doubts about Romney,” said this strategist, speaking on the condition of anonymity to offer a candid assessment of the speech.

Romney underscored repeatedly the religious heritage that he said was at the heart of the Founding Fathers’ vision of the new country. He called for continued public acknowledgment of “the Creator” on currency and in the Pledge of Allegiance, and said nativity scenes and menorahs should be welcome in public places.

He said Americans should focus on their shared moral values rather than the denominational differences that sometimes divide the country. “Whether it was the cause of abolition, or civil rights, or the right to life itself,” Romney said, “no movement of conscience can succeed in America that cannot speak to the convictions of religious people.”

SEE RELATED MATERIALS:  Article VI of the U.S. Constitution 

Leonard Pitts Jr.
Miami Herald
December 5, 2007

Just to make sure I’ve got this straight: their God is threatened by a teddy bear?

As in a plush, cuddly doll in the shape of a bear? As in the glass-eyed figure children sleep with for security? We’re talking teddy bears as in teddy bears? A teddy bear has offended their God?

Lord, have mercy.

You’re familiar with the story that has me venting, right? If not, strap in. This one will have you reaching for your blood pressure pills.

It seems that last week in Sudan, Gillian Gibbons, a 54-year-old British teacher, was arrested. Her offense: she brought the aforementioned teddy bear in and asked her class of 7-year-olds to give it a name. The kids considered Abdullah and Hassan but finally settled, overwhelmingly, upon Muhammad. Muhammad is one of the most common names in that part of the world, so it was not unlike if American kids named a bear “Joe.”

Unfortunately, Muhammad is also the name of the man Muslims revere as a prophet of God. So when some parents heard about the bear, they called authorities. Next thing you know, Gibbons was hauled in. The charge: insulting Islam. The potential penalty: six months and 40 lashes.

Justice, if that’s what you want to call it, apparently moves fast in Sudan. Gibbons was arrested on a Sunday. She was indicted that Wednesday, convicted that Thursday and sentenced to 15 days. That Friday, hundreds of Sudanese took to the streets in protest – not, as you would hope, over the stupidity of the entire affair but, rather, at what they saw as the leniency of the sentence. See, they wanted the death penalty.

If it makes you feel any better: according to a published report, many of the protesters were government workers who had been ordered to take part in the demonstration. Anyway, on Monday of this week, the president of Crazyland – excuse me, Sudan – pardoned Gibbons and she flew home.

Throughout her ordeal, she has maintained that she respects Islam and has asked that people not think ill of the faith because of this. Which is exactly right. Islam is not the problem. Fundamentalism, however, is. And that, as we should know from our own experience, is a mindset that is not confined to one faith.

To the contrary, every faith has them, these rigid doctrinaires who would sacrifice their very humanity for the fool’s gold of theological purity, these people so eager to live the literal law of their holy books that they miss the point of those holy books, shedding compassion, kindness and plain common sense along the way. Worse, they are always literal about the wrong things, always literal about passages in holy writ that they feel empower them to punish, judge, ostracize and condemn. Never literal about the passages that require them to give, forgive, serve and stand humble.

As I said, it’s a failing common to fundamentalists, but that failing has seldom been more galling than here. We are, after all, talking about Sudan, a nation that was embroiled in civil war almost constantly from the time it gained independence in 1956 until a peace treaty was signed in 2005. More than 2 million people died in that war, more than 4 million were displaced.

And then there is Darfur, the western region where four years of government-backed genocide has left an estimated 200,000 people dead. Some might say they are the lucky ones. Luckier than the man whose eyes were gouged out with a bayonet. Luckier than the people burned alive inside their huts. Luckier than the women raped so brutally they can no longer walk, so brutally that urine trickles constantly down their legs.

What a pious, holy nation. Their God is offended by a teddy bear.

If anything, God is offended by them.

Just 40% of Americans go to church weekly, but 70% want a president with strong religious faith.

By Lisa Miller

NEWSWEEK

Updated: 1:39 PM ET Nov 10, 2007

Over the past three years, Sen. John Kerry has had a lot of time to think about his God, and at a meeting with journalists in Washington earlier this month he shared those thoughts. He grew up in a Roman Catholic home before Vatican II; though devout, he prayed in private behind his closed bedroom door, as was the custom at the time. In Vietnam, he prayed to God to save his life, and when he came home some of his foxhole promises no longer felt so pressing. Kerry, a divorced, pro-choice Democrat with a foreign-seeming wife, ran for president in 2004 against an incumbent whose personal Christian-conversion story was intricately woven into his public persona. Yet, out of principle or stubbornness, Kerry chose not to expound upon his own faith until late in the race—too late, he says in retrospect. In the spring and summer of ‘04, a handful of U.S. Catholic bishops announced they’d refuse Kerry holy communion on the grounds that his stance on abortion went against church teachings, and Kerry suddenly found himself having to answer fundamental questions about who he was and what he stood for. “I should have started earlier to introduce who I really was—in ‘02 or ‘03,” he told NEWSWEEK last week. He gave a big Catholic-values speech in Florida in October, but by then it was too late. “October is October. You’ve got to do this earlier,” he says. “People have to have a sense of this as a continuum. Explaining how Catholicism has shaped my view of public life—it would have made a difference.”

These revelations should be instructive to the field of ‘08 hopefuls, who as a group represent a dramatic range of religious views and observance, from Catholic to Mormon to— potentially—Jew, and from extremely orthodox (Mitt Romney) to much less so (Rudy Giuliani). Despite their religiosity or lack thereof, all will have to tell a convincing faith-and-values story to the American public—for Americans, though cynical about politicians, still love public piety. Although just 40 percent of Americans go to church every week, 70 percent say they want a president with strong religious faith, and 94 percent believe in God, according to an August survey by Pew. Kerry believes that a candidate doesn’t have to be a regular churchgoer to be elected, but cannot under any circumstances be an atheist or agnostic. John Green, a fellow at Pew, agrees. “Supporting a candidate who’s religious is shorthand for supporting a candidate with values and principles,” says Green.

If Kerry is right, then a successful candidate must neither remain mute on the faith question nor pander, but tell an authentic personal-values narrative early and often. The thrice-married Giuliani, who told values voters last month that “I don’t easily publicly proclaim myself as the best example of faith,” seems to have passed the authenticity test: last week Pat Robertson endorsed him despite their many ideological disagreements.

Americans have elected and loved secular presidents before, from Thomas Jefferson, who decided to edit the miracles out of the Gospel stories, to Ronald Reagan, who, though a movie actor and not a regular churchgoer, was able to convince people of his sincerity and commitment to high principles. In the absence of an orthodox religion story, Princeton sociologist Robert Wuthnow suggests that candidates tell a story about “a sense of rebirth or change or insights or awakenings.” As the religious right scrambles to cohere, perhaps this is a good moment to remember that authentic belief in God is a personal matter, and if half of Americans can’t find God in church, maybe the president doesn’t have to, either.

URL: http://www.newsweek.com/id/69531

Linda P. Campbell
Fort Worth Star-Telegram
October 20, 2007

The day an ambulance transported a player from a football scrimmage, I prayed he would be all right.

The night the trainer was holding up fingers in front of a dazed defender, I prayed the injury wasn’t major.

And when a tight end was helped to the sideline and then taken to the hospital, I prayed he wouldn’t suffer lasting damage.

There might not be crying in baseball, but there is praying in football.

It’s a violent game. Contested in an emotional atmosphere. By young men who in the best of worlds have bonded with their teammates and their coaches. And people get hurt.

So a little head-bowing, a moment of silence, a reminder from the announcer that “it’s just a game” strike me as comforting, not constitutional tinder.

But a New Jersey town has been upended over what separation of church and state means for locker rooms, playing fields and pregame rituals.

Last year, U.S. District Judge Dennis Cavanaugh decided that football coach Marcus Borden, who also teaches Spanish at East Brunswick High School, could take a knee and bow his head during his players’ pregame prayers.

Cavanaugh ruled from the bench that Borden wasn’t leading the prayers – or even really participating in them.

“I agree that an Establishment Clause violation would occur if the coach initiated and led the activity, but I find nothing wrong with remaining silent and bowing one’s head and taking a knee as a sign of respect for his players’ actions and traditions, nor do I believe would a reasonable observer,” wrote Cavanaugh, who was appointed to the bench in 2000 by President Clinton.

(Read a transcript at www.thnt.com/assets/html/ B535522726.HTM.)

If only it were so simple.

For most of his 24 years at East Brunswick, Borden perpetuated the “tradition” by appointing players to lead prayers at mandatory pregame meals and conducting a locker room prayer circle, according to court filings.

He did it even though the Supreme Court ruled in the 1960s that the First Amendment bars school officials from conducting classroom prayers or Bible devotions.

Even though the Supreme Court ruled in 1992 that public schools unconstitutionally promote religion by organizing or leading graduation prayers.

Even though the Supreme Court ruled in 2000 that school officials can’t appoint or arrange for students to lead public prayers before football games.

Borden did it until 2005, when some cheerleaders, players and parents complained to the superintendent. They told her, among other things (according to a court brief), that those who objected to pregame dinner prayers were told to wait them out in the bathroom.

When the district told Borden to stop leading prayers, he quit his job; then he withdrew his resignation and sued for a court order allowing him to quietly bow his head and take a knee with his team.

District officials have asked the 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, which covers New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Delaware and the Virgin Islands, to rule that even his silent action would go too far toward endorsing religion.

“Borden does not get to infringe students’ and parents’ religious freedom because, as a public employee, he does not get to make policy: The District does,” the district’s lawyers argue in a brief. A three-judge panel heard arguments Oct. 3.

They’re absolutely correct about public employees not coercing students to engage in favored religious conduct. Teachers shouldn’t evangelize on school time. They shouldn’t use their positions of influence to promote certain beliefs, denigrate others or make students feel ostracized.

But honestly, once we start policing what’s intended when people take a knee, have we divorced the law from reality?

When is it genuflection and when sincerely secular?

Ideally, coaches should neutrally respect their athletes’ choices to pray or not, but where’s the line that they dare not cross between promoting unity and seeding discord?

And when you hear about a coach secretly selling players’ medical information to big-money donors, how do you escape the sense that there are worse things that a coach can do than take a knee with his team?

Leonard Pitts Jr.
Miami Herald
October 18, 2007

I already know what’s going to happen after I write this column.

Someone is going to say, why did you waste space condemning the latest drivel from the mouth of Ann Coulter? Don’t you know she only says these outrageous things to promote her books? Why reward her with attention?

The argument is not without merit. Coulter plays the news media like Louis Armstrong once played his cornet. She is a virtuoso of stage-managed controversy. So there’s something to be said for refusing to play along, for ignoring her in the hope that she will just go away.

But some things only fester and grow in the dark. Some things use silence as assent.

Last week, Coulter said that in her perfect America, everyone would be a Christian. She said this to Donny Deutsch, who was hosting her on his CNBC program, “The Big Idea.” Deutsch, who is Jewish, expressed alarm. Whereupon Coulter told him Jews simply needed to be “perfected” – i.e., made to accept Jesus as savior. Which is, of course, one of the pillars (along with the slander of Christ’s murder) supporting 2,000 years of pogroms, abuse and Holocaust.

I suspect the reason some people believe that kind of ignorance is best ignored is that they find it difficult to take it seriously, or to accept that Coulter – or those who embrace her – really believes what she says. After all, this is not 1933, not 1948, not 1966. It is two-thousand-by-God-oh-seven, post-Seinfeld, post-Gore-Lieberman, post-”Schindler’s List.” We no longer live in the era when open anti-Semitism could find wide traction. This is a different time.

But time, Martin Luther King once observed, is neutral. Time alone changes nothing. It is people who make change in time. Or not. So you have to wonder if this determined sanguinity in the face of intolerance is not ultimately an act of monumental self-delusion.

While some of us are cheerfully assuring one another that They Don’t Really Mean It, the Southern Poverty Law Center reports that the number of hate groups in this country has risen by a whopping 40 percent in just the last seven years. If you had spent those years, as I have, jousting in print with the agents of intolerance, you would not be surprised. It would be all but impossible to quantify, but I’ve noted a definite spike, not simply in the hatefulness of some people, but in the willingness to speak that hatefulness openly and without shame. What used to be anonymous now comes with a name and address.

Like Coulter, many of those people find intellectual cover under the cloak of conservatism. It is a development thoughtful conservatives (the very need to use that qualifier makes the case) ought to view with alarm. For all that Colin Powell, J.C. Watts, the presidents Bush and others have done to posit a friendly new “big tent” conservatism, Coulter and others have done even more to drag the movement back toward open intolerance.

That will be read as criticism of conservatism, but I intend a larger point. After all, liberalism has had its own unfortunate extremes – the drug use of the ’60s, the Weather Underground, the Symbionese Liberation Army and the like. The difference is, say what you will about Michael Moore or Jesse Jackson, they are not pushing back toward that which has been discredited. Coulter is.

And if some of us are laughing that off, not everybody is.

So this is not about bashing conservatives. It is, rather, about challenging them, and all of us. Within living memory, we have seen Jews in boxcars and blacks in trees and silence from those who should have been shouting. They pretended it wasn’t happening until it already had.

So, what about Ann Coulter? What about the push-back against diversity, pluralism and tolerance that she represents? I keep hearing that we should just ignore it.

My point is, that’s been tried before. It didn’t work.

September 18, 2007

While American soldiers fight to establish a secular democracy abroad, many Americans want to create a Christian nation at home.

Consider the findings of “State of the First Amendment 2007,” a national survey released this week by the First Amendment Center. Significant numbers of Americans express support for government sponsorship of the majority religion, especially in public schools:

•58 percent want teacher-led prayers in schools.

•43 percent endorse school holiday programs that are entirely Christian and devotional.

•50 percent would allow public school teachers to teach the Bible as a “factual text” in history classes.

Despite the fact that all of the above are unconstitutional under current law, many people see nothing wrong – and much right – with school officials privileging or even endorsing the Christian faith.

Transpose the location (or substitute another religion) and the result would surely be very different. Would Americans support the creation of an Iraqi state where the majority Shiites imposed their prayers, religious celebrations and scriptures on all Iraqi schoolchildren? Not likely.

On the contrary, we send young Americans to fight for an Iraq where people of all faiths will be protected from state-imposed religion. Why? Because we understand that (however quixotic the quest) only a secular democracy in Iraq with no established faith will guarantee religious freedom – and end sectarian strife.

Closer to home, however, many Americans seem to think our framers had another idea. According to the First Amendment poll, nearly two-thirds of Americans (65 percent) agree that our nation’s founders intended the United States to be a Christian nation. Even more striking, 55 percent believe that the U.S. Constitution establishes a Christian nation. (For complete survey results, visit www.firstamendmentcenter.org/ sofa_reports/index.aspx)

Now, it’s true that many (but not all) of our founders were Christians. And it’s true that the Protestant majority dominated the nation’s institutions for much of our early history. But the U.S. Constitution nowhere mentions God or Christianity, an omission that was widely criticized in 1787.

In fact, the only mention of religion in the body of the Constitution (before the addition of the religious-liberty clauses of the First Amendment) is the “no religious test” for public office provision of Article VI. By ensuring that people of all faiths or none could hold office, the founders made clear their intention to found a secular republic committed to full religious freedom.

Of course, people define “Christian nation” in various ways – ranging from a nation that reflects Christian virtues to a nation where the government promotes the Christian faith. But under any definition, the Constitution in no way establishes or creates a Christian nation.

Some might argue that teacher-led prayers or Nativity pageants in public schools are a far cry from the dangers of a Shiite (or Sunni) theocracy in Iraq. Perhaps. But the lesson of history is that when a majority uses the government to promote the majority religion, conflict and oppression inevitably follow.

That brings me to the most disturbing finding of the First Amendment Center poll: 28 percent of Americans believe that “freedom to worship as one chooses” was never meant to apply to religious groups that the majority of the people consider “extreme or on the fringe.”

At various times in our history, that would have meant no religious freedom for Baptists, Roman Catholics or Mormons. Today it would deny liberty to any number of small or unpopular religious groups.

Fortunately, our founders understood that the great danger of majority rule is majority denial of fundamental human rights. That’s why they wisely put some rights – religious liberty first among them – beyond the reach of majority vote.

The United States is not now and never has been a Christian nation in any official or legal sense of the term. It is precisely because we live in a secular democracy with First Amendment protections that Christians – and people of all faiths – have more freedom to practice their religion here than anywhere else on Earth.

By Michael Kinsley

Mitt Romney wants the J.F.K. deal with voters: If you don’t hold my religion against me, I won’t impose my religion on you. But that deal made little sense in 1960 and makes no sense today. Kennedy said, “I believe in a President whose religious views are his own private affair.” But the Roman Catholic Church holds that abortion is the deliberate killing of a human being. Catholic liberal politicians since Mario Cuomo have said they personally accept the doctrine of their church but nevertheless believe in a woman’s right to choose. This is silly. There is no right to choose murder. Either these politicians are lying to their church, or they are lying to us.

These days presidential candidates are required to wear their religion on their sleeve. God is a personal adviser and inspiration to all of them. They all pray relentlessly. Or so they say. If that’s not true, I want to know it. And if it is true, I want to know more about it. I want to know what God is telling them–just as I would want to know what Karl Rove was telling them if they claimed him for an adviser. If religion is central to their lives and moral systems, then it cannot be the candidates’ “own private affair.” To evaluate them, we need to know in some detail the doctrines of their faith and the extent to which they accept these doctrines. “Worry about whether I’m going to reform health care, not whether I’m going to hell” is not sufficient.

What exactly should we worry about? Most important, we need to know what forms of conduct a candidate’s religion forbids or requires and how the candidate interprets that injunction. Is it a universal moral imperative or just a personal lifestyle choice? Every religion has its list of no-nos. Mormonism’s is very long and includes alcohol, coffee, tea and such forms of sexual behavior as “passionate kissing” outside wedlock. If Romney’s church doctrines require efforts to impose these restrictions on others, Romney has a Cuomo problem: he cannot be a good Mormon and a good President. He needs to show at the least that he has thought about this.

Some church doctrines give offense even though they don’t constrain an outsider’s behavior in any way. They can imply a more general worldview, and voters have a right to know if a presidential candidate shares that perspective. Until recently, just about all religions had a built-in patriarchal worldview–God the Father, male priests and so on–that many today find offensive. To what extent has the candidate’s church moved with the times, and what has the candidate done to push his or her church in the right direction? I say the right direction, but many voters, of course, believe that this kind of modernization is the wrong direction. They also are entitled to know where the candidate stands and to vote on that basis.

In the online magazine Slate a while back, editor Jacob Weisberg called Joseph Smith, Mormonism’s founder, an “obvious con man” and wrote, “Romney has every right to believe in con men, but I want to know if he does, and if so, I don’t want him running the country.” Thus a third argument that religion can’t be a private affair for a presidential candidate: what a person deeply believes says something about his or her character, which voters may wish to take into account. Deeply religious people may find a candidate’s ability to make that “leap of faith” admirable or even essential. Or they may find it offensive if it conflicts with their own faith. (Some devout Christians object to Mormonism’s belief that the Bible is a mistranslation.) A skeptic may not want someone so credulous in the nation’s top job.

Proceed with caution here, of course. Every religion is full of doctrines and beliefs that may seem nutty to outsiders. Jesus could be seen as a snake-oil salesman if you don’t buy the snake oil. Weisberg says Mormonism is different because it is so “recent,” involving miraculous events in the 19th century in upstate New York. Well, I dunno. The patina of age may explain why Jesus’ walking on water is easier to believe than Smith’s golden plates and magic glasses. But it doesn’t go far in justifying the distinction. For me, any candidate who believes in the literal truth of the Old Testament, the New Testament, the Book of Mormon or the novels of Jane Austen is probably too credulous to be President.

Above all, we need to see some struggle. Precisely because all religious doctrines are hard to believe, believers and nonbelievers alike have an interest in how a candidate who claims to be deeply religious deals with religion’s improbabilities. It will be amusing if Romney is done in by a fear of his religious values because, as near as we can tell, he has no values of any sort that he wouldn’t happily abandon if they became a burden. But in politics, you are who you pretend to be.