61 million Americans think president is a Muslim

Serious political danger for the White House, it says here.

Among those who say Obama is a Muslim, 60 percent [37 million] say they learned about his religion from the media, suggesting that their opinions are fueled by misinformation.

Well, that's not a very nice thing to say about the media, is it.

Independents, too, are now more apt to see the president as a Muslim: Among independents, 18 percent say he is a Muslim, up eight percentage points [since March, 2009].

Nearly double. There's a spot of tarnish on the noble "independents."

25 percent [77 million] say most Muslims in the United States are not patriotic Americans.

Nice. And the strongest representative demographic within the poll:

More than a third of conservative Republicans now say Obama is a Muslim.

What's really sad is, that's not at all surprising.

And it serves their purposes and goals to keep saying it for the above reasons: the "media" insist on wallowing in these unseemly, fabricated controversies and even the "independent voters" are catching the wave. Most heartening for conservative Republicans is the insidious anti-American attachment to "most Muslims."

Of course that accusatory tastelessness has long been a feature of even "mainstream" conservative commentary having to do with Barack Obama but the anti-American Muslim combo is extra special.

I can't say I would ever have expected any White House to be in "serious political danger" for coming to the defense of the Religion Clauses of the First* Amendment. But like he said, this is America.

* It even comes before the Second.

La Crosse priest's trial delayed until October

Sexual assault trial was scheduled to begin next Monday.

Double negative of the day

In his official capacity ...

Spartanburg, SC council chairman Jeff Horton says that as a Christian he could not ask anyone not to pray in Jesus' name.

h/t Religion Clause.

Wisconsin AG dons national prayer day suit

Wisconsin Attorney General J.B. Van Hollen is listed among several "additional counsel" on a friend-of-the-court brief* filed with the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals last week in support of defendant President Barack Obama, and challenging federal district Judge Barbara Crabb's April ruling that the Act of Congress directing the president to declare a national day of prayer is unconstitutional.

The friends in alliance with Obama's main argument is captioned:

The Private Prayers Contemplated By the National Day of Prayer Statute Are Less Intrusive Than the Public Prayers Routinely Offered by Each Branch of the Federal Government

Translation: The NDP is not as bad as some of the other stuff we do.

Argue the friends, formulating this conditional statement:

If public prayers opening sessions of the federal and state governments are permissible as acknowledgments of our Nation's heritage—and they surely are—than [sic] the private prayers contemplated by 36 U.S.C. § 119 also pass constitutional muster.

But that isn't the point, nor was it the question presented to, addressed, and decided by Judge Crabb. The referenced federal statute requires ("the President shall") the president to "issue each year a proclamation designating the first Thursday in May as a National Day of Prayer." It doesn't matter whether whatever prayers obtain from Congress' directive "pass constitutional muster."

What's at issue is the requiring of the executive branch by an Act of Congress to do something, as the First Amendment famously puts it, "respecting an establishment of religion." The prayers themselves — which for many people didn't even get prayed — are irrelevant.

Nobody ordered prayers, and nobody ever said anybody did. Ultimately, "no law" should mean "no law" to your garden variety strict constructionist. Or else you might reasonably expect it would.

It is DECLARED that 36 U.S.C. § 119 violates the establishment clause of the First Amendment to the United States Constitution.

That is, the statute violates the Constitution, not the prayers. Judge Crabb couldn't have been any clearer, yet J.B. Van Hollen and friends completely miss the point. The circuit court would do well to ignore the brief, just as the brief's authors ignore the district court's ruling.

I keep hearing from allegedly conservative jurisprudes about how they venerate above all other considerations, "the plain meaning of the text." Well, here is a good chance for them to prove it for once.

Update 04.14.11: And they did not.

Earlier:
Two things Barbara Crabb never said
Impeach Barbara Crabb
Western District of Wisconsin letter of the day
Pulitzer unlikely for J-S editorialist

* Brief of the States of Texas et al (.pdf; 22 pgs.).

eta: "The other side of this coin is that, the more Congress and craven politicians proselytize with rote exercises that have the depth and meaning of flag lapel pins, the more they cheapen religion."

Brookfield Unitarians pose mortal threat

Your latest Second Amendment heroine.

I suspect the sight of a woman strapped with a sidearm at a Unitarian service was even less believable than the Holy Ghost.

What I know of the Unitarian congregations around here, the likelihood of needing to exercise self-defense against them is zero.

"Truthfully, we found it very intimidating," especially in light of the 2005 shootings at a church service at a Brookfield hotel that left eight people dead, and a 2008 shooting at a Unitarian church in Tennessee that killed two people.

Unitarians are also up on their current events.

However, soon we'll have photos of churches with "No Guns" signs outside, which could be useful to a variety of rhetorical arguments.

[A] guest minister was speaking about civil rights.

Just not the same ones Ms. Sutterfield had in mind. I get wanting to intimidate crooks, but I don't get wanting to intimidate Unitarians.

eta: WTMJ-4 video. Sutterfield hoped to "engender discussion" and won't return to the church unless they let her bring her 9mm Glock.

Some other "prominent gun buffs."

Milwaukee sheriff says what?

Who's he trying to kid:

[Milwaukee County Sheriff David Clarke] hopes to get other officials to buy in [to the boot camp program]. If not, he'll impose it anyway, Clarke said. "With my constitutional authority, if I have to, I'll do it unilaterally," he said.

Clarke wants some new classes on anger management, choosing friends, [and] Bible study ...

"They go back to the same goofs." — Clarke

Why is James Dobson famous?

James Dobson is "making stuff up," says Barack Obama.

Not that that's news, of course, since for people like Dobson, making stuff up is a base function of the medulla oblongata. As Obama reportedly put it, "Somebody would be pretty hard-pressed to make that argument" — that he was distorting the Bible.

"Argument" is a generous courtesy on Obama's part, since Dobson didn't "argue" so much as whine noisily. I know this because the national press deems his wailings and gnashings practically lead-in material on the evening news.

Why this is is an interesting question on its own. In a more perfect world, Dobson would be wearing a sandwich board and ringing a bell on a street corner somewhere. People would pass him by, maybe give him a dollar or a cigarette or a half a bagel, but otherwise ignore his fevered gesticulations. He might even get arrested.

But Dobson apparently has "influence" over a considerable number of people including — it is rumored — the ear of the current president himself and all that entails.

Last evening CNN devoted an extended segment to Dobson's unwittingly doltish performance during which, it must be gratefully acknowledged, the laughably inept Tony Perkins was definitively flogged by Al Sharpton, Roland Martin, and Anderson Cooper in turn (even though both Perkins and Sharpton shared a round of guffaws about Cooper, who is gay, burning in Hell. Which would be funny if not for Perkins and Sharpton actually believing it).

And Perkins needed to start making more stuff up when he was shown portions of the speech featuring Obama criticizing hardliner secularists and acknowledging not only the existence of Judeo-Christian moral principles in the American system of law, but also the fact that many are appropriately enforceable. Perkins then tried to make it about Obama's personal faith, which it wasn't at all.

Dobson, who is incompetent even as a conservative radio host, a position created for incompetents, commits the same clear error.

It's obvious why Dobson dug up Obama's 2006 speech to a Christian group. Because he doesn't want his own little farce exposed. And because of Obama's emerging strategy to woo some of the Christian "values voters" over and from whom Dobson demands exclusive preserve, allegiance and, ultimately, control.

Dobson hasn't a clue what Obama was talking about and when Dobson weeps about being prevented from pushing "partial birth abortion" legislation he's flatly lying. He can push it wherever he likes.

Obama's speech was informed by political theory, not aversion to "orthodox Christian" dogma, as Tony Perkins calls his own personal, subjective version of objective morality.

What Obama is saying is that there are a number of approaches a rational political society may take in order to arrange a widely applicable system of ethics. Because it's impossible for everyone to agree on everything, Obama is initiating a dialogue to determine whether there are some things that almost everyone agrees are destructive to the polity's ethic, theft of property or child sexual assault for example.

When more subtle ethical questions arise, religion presents itself into the calculus and because religion wouldn't be religion without dogma, Dobson's dogma ultimately faces off against one of the other televangelists' dogmas.

The Bible that James Dobson is whacking is a very complicated assembly of disparate and highly derivative texts whose influence in many, many ways shaped Western civilization itself, not to mention civilizations elsewhere, still in existence or otherwise.

It accreted over centuries and various bits and pieces of it have been adhered to — or not — by hundreds of separate and distinct societies over a few thousand years.

Obama is not saying that only his interpretation of the Bible is inherently correct; it's Dobson and his ilk that are making that baseless insistence. Obama is simply pointing out that sectarian dogmatism in the false guise of absolute morality is a stumbling block to constructing the political ethic, by definition.

Dobson needs to understand that he's not going to convert all the people of America to his particular flavor of so-called Christianity. And obviously he can continue to insist on his own special divine insight.

The point is, if you are going to use the Bible as a source of ethical guidance, that's perfectly appropriate. Even I would use it. Selectively, of course, as I'm not about to give up calamari or cotton/rayon blends.

And it's also perfectly appropriate to attempt to codify that Biblical guidance in legislation and turn its enforcement over to the D.A.

But you have to support it with some argument other than, "Because I speak personally on behalf of the Almighty True God and you must Obey." Legislation formulated on such grounds are the mustard seeds of theocracy, a form of polity favored by America's enemies.

Obama's speech is simply a reminder of a few glaringly obvious historical facts of which Dobson evidently insists on remaining ignorant, which proves Obama's point precisely, hence the self-defeating, humiliatingly ironic quality of Dobson's reaction.

Rational people probably need to start ignoring anachronistic cranks like Dobson and Hagee and Swaggart and the rest or else consign them back to their bells and their sandwich boards.

While I'm suspicious of "leaders" on general principle — Al Gore's repeated invocation of the term to describe Obama during his endorsement was downright Orwellian creepy — Obama is demonstrating leadership by laying out the terms of a national discussion, as he did for the Christian group in 2006.

And it's a welcome initiative, given religious dogmatism's often fractious and deleterious effects in this society, something even the Framers of the Constitution were well acquainted with.

Incidentally, Dobson's most recent fit of the vapors did serve at least one useful purpose, apart from their usual entertainment value. It unearthed a speech of Obama's comparing the admonitions of the New Testament with the policies of the Department of Defense.

It's not something you hear from a candidate for the U.S. presidency very often and it's refreshing as hell. That sort of talk is guaranteed to inflame the Dobsonian followers of the Prince of Peace but politically moderate Christians are guaranteed to respond well.

And if they are disillusioned Republicans or otherwise undecided, then hopefully Dobson's hysterics cement the deal for Obama.

'My faith is better than yours' — McCain

"The Constitution established the U.S. as a Christian Nation."

— Candidate for President John McCain

"[N]o religious Test shall ever be required as a Qualification to any Office or public Trust under the United States."

— U.S. Constitution, Art. VI Sec. 1 Cl. 3

Priorities, People of America

There are at least two things I don't quite get about my adopted home, the United States of America: religion and hockey (in Canada, they're one and the same thing).

Last night I had occasion to serve as doorman/bouncer at Brass Bell Music's Battle of the Bands, a judged competition* between seven local high school outfits, the first prize for which is a slot at Summerfest. I did it as a favor, but I didn't mind because the kids are usually pretty good, and there were some really fine bands playing there last night. Plus they're a good gang of folks down at Brass Bell.

James, who works in accounting, pleaded with me for several days to take his place at the hall entrance collecting the six dollar cover charge. After I finally relented, on the condition that I didn't have to wear a bright green Battle of the Bands polyester t-shirt, James sent an e-mail to Tristann, who owns the store, indicating that I had "enthusiastically volunteered" the substitution. Wiseguy.

I'm not sure why James needed the escape route; maybe it had something to do with being annoyed at a bunch of teenage brats yelling "BULLSHIT!" at him over the cover charge last year. I didn't get any of that, only one punk who tried to get in without paying by deploying the old "I'm just looking for my friend" ruse.

Hey kid, I was born at night, but not last night.

"All these other people, who are doing exactly what you're doing right now, paid six bucks," I informed him. "You don't need to be a dick about it," he said. "Sure I do." He paid, and made quite the little hissy show of it. "Best six bucks evar," said Tristann.

The only other problem was, the fourth game of the National Hockey League Stanley Cup Final Series was on at the same time as the Battle. Fortunately the event was held at the Shorewood Legion, and "Legion" means bar and television set (singular, as it turns out).

Everybody has done this when, for example, you have to attend a wedding reception during the World Series or something, and you case the joint in advance to find out where the teevee is.

Turns out there was a Brewers game on last night as well, but the bartender assured me that the Legion patrons wouldn't be paying all that much attention to it, so whenever I wanted to come downstairs and check on the hockey game, she'd flip over to NBC for me.

The series, between the Detroit Red Wings and the Pittsburgh Penguins, has been some superb hockey: constant end to end action, great goaltending, and outstanding bodychecking. While Detroit won the first two games at home, the Penguins edged out a hard fought 3-2 win in the third game, so last night's contest was a bit of do or die for Pittsburgh before the series returns to the Motor City.

I checked in on the game a few quick times during the first and second periods. They're a very nice bunch down at the Shorewood Legion. One of the bartenders even stood a couple of the other Brass Bell boys a shot of Jameson's (I ain't mentioning no names). I'll have to head back for the Friday Fish Fry some time.

So anyway, the Brewers game safely over and the doorman/bouncer gig more than well in hand with only two bands left to Battle, I figured I could catch the last few minutes of the third period.

It was 2-1 Detroit, with the Red Wings in the midst of killing off a penalty in the face of a ferocious offensive attack by the Penguins led by 20-year-old Sidney Crosby of Cole Harbour, Nova Scotia, the best player in the League and who many consider the heir to the great Wayne Gretzky.

And you know what? One of the patrons grabs the remote and changes to the channel to ... not the NBA, not the Sports Illustrated video swimsuit edition, not even NASCAR: Women's College Softball.

Women's. College. Softball.

Somebody needs to explain this phenomenon to me one of these days. And also that whole Obama thing.

* I didn't hang around long enough to find out who won, but I was rooting for that one punky all-girl band.

Warren Jeffs' slippery slope

This is what happens when you legalize gay marriage:

Petitioner's Exhibit # 2

"Prophet, Seer and Revelator."

Uzi had a very busy Tuesday

Not the storied Israeli submachine gun, but Uzi Aharon, the deputy mayor of a town near Tel Aviv, reports the Jerusalem Post:

In the morning, a story ran on how he organized to retrieve and burn hundreds of New Testaments given to Ethiopian Jews in his city by local messianic Jews. By 9 a.m. he was on an Army Radio news-talk show defending his actions, which he called "purging the evil among us."

At 10:30 he was on a morning news show saying that Ethiopian immigrants were being encouraged to go against Judaism by messianic Jews.

But by the early afternoon he had already been interviewed by Russian, Italian and French TV, explaining to their highly offended audiences back home how he had not meant for the Bibles to be burned, and trying to undo the damage caused by the news (and photographs) of Jews burning New Testaments.

But then he also told The Associated Press that he didn't condemn the Bible burning, calling it a "commandment."

Uzi sounds more conflicted than the Jews for Jesus he's battling against. Local authorities are to investigate the possible violation of two Israeli laws intended to prevent people from inciting religious violence. I guess you would need those in "The Holy Land."

In other Messianic Jew news, Connecticut wankee Joseph I. Lieberman is scheduled for a July Kibbutz with John McCain's "crazy" pastor, John Hagee. The countdown to Armageddon continues.

"The most childish superstitions"

It's an article of faith among creationists and other assorted apologists that the noted German-American physicist Albert Einstein was a religious man.

Hopefully this letter will put an end to that once and for all.

Even still, the CBC report carries the desperate ramblings of an Oxford theologian, continuing in futile resistance against Einstein's now-total cultural appropriation by evil atheists.

Richard Dawkins has wondered why modern universities still have theology departments, and if so, why they don't likewise have an emeritus chair in leprechaun studies. It's a good question.

No noggin exam for Bishop Bushey?

Sister Mary Bernadette a.k.a. Tammy Lewis of Necedah, WI is scheduled for a competency hearing May 27 in Juneau County related to her two felony charges of causing mental harm to a child arising from having left a deceased 90-year-old woman to "rot on a toilet" for nine weeks whilst the children at issue shat in a bucket.

No word yet on similar process (as against the identical charges) for Lewis's co-conspirator in attempted resurrection and religious "Superior," Bishop Alan A. "John Peter" Bushey. Lewis's attorney had a pretty good line in court yesterday, though.

Dan Berkos disputed comments of prosecutors that Bushey headed a cult. Berkos said almost any organized religion could be described that way.

Well, maybe so. But that doesn't mean this one is excluded from the definition. "Cult" may be overbroad or even underinclusive, but if it has any legal meaning at all, it must apply to these circumstances.

Ya think?

I wonder if Counselor Berkos has his experts booked yet. Any hearing involving the distinctions between mental illness and religious belief is bound to be interesting. That's why they should flog the Bishop in there too. And while they're at it, grab that Kenny Van Hoof dude.

A Mother's Day Prayer

Religious materials everywhere
and hymns playing on the stereo

At least occasionally, the distinction between religious belief and mental illness is somewhat difficult to discern.

After God entered negotiations with a Wisconsin religious woman, the woman left her 90-year-old mother dead on the toilet in her home for nine weeks. According to the religious woman, God promised her he would revisit his celebrated Lazarus number on the dead woman if the religious woman prayed to Him hard enough.

On Wednesday, police in Necedah discovered that the prior negotiations had evidently got somehow scuppered, and the woman's mother was still dead. Since March 4. "Piled" on the toilet.

The religious woman, Tammy Lewis a.k.a. Sister Mary Bernadette, said she was acting in concordance with the instructions of her religious "Superior," a gentleman called Bishop "I Refute It Thus" Bushey. Two counts of felony causing mental harm to a child — one for each of Lewis's two teenaged children — were filed against both grown-ups today.

Sister M.B. told police her mother wasn't really fully and completely dead and besides, there was another toilet for the kids in the house, which turned out to be a bucket in a closet.

Investigators understatedly described the scene as "horrific."

Bishop Bushey had warned the terrified children they had better not run away, because Demons were conspiring to keep Sister M.B.'s mother dead, and if the Demons won out, then the teenagers would have to go to school and get jobs, because the dead woman paid all the church bills. So just shut up and keep praying, kids.

"Juneau County Sheriff Brent Oleson said he had no further information on Bushey's religious affiliation," the AP reports.

Does it matter which one? The problem is *A* religious affiliation.

It's unclear whether the Bishop of Necedah's god was the same omnibenevolent deity who didn't save an 11-year-old girl from a diabetic coma and death late last month after an untreated three-week illness during an attempted "faith healing."

Earlier: National Day of Custom Mattresses.

Later: A Catholic Splinter Outfit.

So it wasn't Sister M.B.'s mother after all.

One True Messiah™ arrested

Just like Jesus was (except for the child molesting bit).

Did Ye Get Bent?

Kinda makes my point.

As does: Bible God voices direct woman to murder infant.

I'll take Spinoza's view of the Bible over hers, thanks.

Angry God now free to move against Richardson

Authorities removed four minors from a New Mexico religious cult's compound following allegations of "inappropriate conduct" involving the cult's leader, a 66-year-old former sailor and self-proclaimed Messiah called "Michael," whose real name is Wayne Bent.

"My children are kidnapped because some demon wrote a letter to people in authority accusing me of some crimes," Michael/Bent told nobody in particular, on the internets.

One of the minors is the daughter of former cult member John Sayer, who left the compound in 2005 after Sayer noticed that Bent "got weirder" ... in 1999. "He was claiming to be God," said Sayer, who hung around another six years to make sure he wasn't. Or was.

The daughter since returned. Sayer can't say whether Bent had sex with either of his two teenage daughters, who Sayer claims only "lay naked" with Wayne Bent. But, shrugged Sayer, "Anything's possible."

Jeff Bent, son of Michael/Wayne Bent, wrote an insolent letter to NM Gov. Bill Richardson, threatening God's wrath on the erstwhile Democratic presidential hopeful. "Now that you have moved against us because of our faith, the cup of God's anger* is full to the brim, and now He is free to move against you," the letter reads.

Wayne Bent's other son, Get, was unavailable for reply.

While Jeff Bent also denies any inappropriate conduct, he told a UK film crew that “God came down on Michael and forced him to consummate with Christiana. It was a terrible, strange act of God.” Christiana is Jeff Bent's wife and Wayne Bent's daughter-in-law.

Confusing ... like Father's Day on Cape Breton Island.

The British documentary about the cult, incidentally, reruns on the National Geographic Channel May 7. Nat Geo's programming is generally limited to wild animal safaris and visits to the zoo, so why would it air ... hold on; never mind.

There is some speculation as to whether Wayne Bent's cult is of the suicide variety, because Bent had predicted the end of the world for October 31, 2007, which turned out to be only the end of the Toronto Maple Leafs' regular NHL season. After the world didn't end again, Bent's followers told the film crew they were "preparing for death."

Leafs fans, on the other hand, got on with their sad little lives. Messiahs, doomsday portents, and sexual initiations are all standard features of religions dating back several thousand years.

* WWJD? Try the decaf.

Earlier cult news.

Jeremiah Wright: Enough already

Enough with the Jeremiah Wright already. Why is this guy even news? He's a preacher. What do you expect from preachers? Crazy ass mofo shit.

Besides, Wright hasn't said anything mo fo' sho crazier than the wacky knuckleheads John McCain chillz wit'. Hurricane Katrina was God's punishment on America because some gay people were planning on having a parade in New Orleans?

I thought that's what you did in New Orleans.

Compared to a blunt assessment of the occasional effects of U.S. foreign policy, that's not just crazy, that's bat-shittery. Yet I don't see Anderson Cooper convening a nightly tribunal of nine to endlessly dissect the inanities of John Hagee and the rest of the megachurch televangelizers, any of whom on any given day will come up with something ten times stupider than anything Jeremiah Wright ever said in his life, in Barack Obama's presence or otherwise.

Dr. Glenn P. Hastedt is a professor of political science at James Madison University in Virginia. Hastedt wrote a book, now in its seventh edition, called American Foreign Policy: Past, Present, Future. It's one of the definitive surveys and a "required text." After conducting an exhaustive review of U.S. foreign policy drawing on a myriad of sources reflecting every conceivable perspective, Dr. Hastedt provides a conclusion summarizing a number of the dominant views of U.S. hegemony — in other words, the "common wisdom." He calls one of them the 'America as Balancer' view:

[T]he United States must learn to live with uncertainty. Absolute security is an unattainable objective and one that produces only imperial overstretch. In sum, the America as Balancer perspective holds that ... the primary national security threats to the United States are self-inflicted. They take the form of a proliferation of security commitments designed to protect America's economic interests.

Now, tell me how that isn't just a rigorously academic way of saying, "the chickens may come home to roost"? Al-Qaeda hit the WTC for a reason. Remember bin Laden's ghoulish disavowal of the innocence of the WTC victims, because they were U.S. taxpayers? Not because they needed converting to Islam.

It's a blinding glimpse of the obvious that U.S. foreign policy may have detrimental consequences for the U.S. itself. How could it not, given America's preeminent global position. America will be seen by many people on the other side of the world as oppressors for that reason alone, even before it sets up military bases within a stone's throw of the Kaaba.

Is that to say that America shouldn't establish a military presence in the Middle East? Not necessarily; only that there will be consequences, and those consequences may include retaliations in the form of 9/11. How is that even controversial? Those are standard considerations for the average competent actor in international relations, especially these days.

Jeremiah Wright is a preacher and it's his job to detect the Hand of God in everything and then tell anyone within bellowing distance all about it. Never mind that he can't prove there even is a "God," he just assumes it and furthermore assumes its constant involvement in the affairs of humans. That's what preachers do.

Sometimes they even relate the details of personal conversations they've had with God (preachers may waive the deity-preacher privilege; God may not, which is one of the reasons why you never hear from Him). And if I'm not mistaken, God has been communicating his displeasure with various warring tribes at least since the World was created 6,000 years ago.

So why does it come as any surprise to anyone that Jeremiah Wright would presume to articulate God's displeasure with certain aspects of U.S. foreign policy? And why are the surprised the same ones that venerate Ronald Reagan, who, much like John Hagee, consulted an ergot-poisoning-fueled nightmare called the Book of Revelation to fire his own End Times hallucinations? And whose necromancing First Lady consulted with astrologers.

Whereas John Hagee's "god damn Americas" come in the form of otherwise rationally explainable tropical weather disturbances that cripple half the country, Pastor Wright's candid observations on foreign policy have nothing on Hagee's demented fantasies.

Wright is playing to an audience and his main purpose is as a motivational speaker. It's a black schtick, which is cool, but his delivery is lame-on-arrival. That 'white people ain't got no rhythm' bit got old a long time ago. And I ask again, then how come Miles Davis got up at five in the morning to go round up Gerry Mulligan and Gil Evans when they were recording Birth Of The Cool? Because Miles wanted soulless cats who couldn't dance?

But that's just my opinion. Who am I to say that Barack Obama may have enjoyed the hell out of Wright's act, but that he shouldn't have? Personally I prefer Chris Rock or Richard Pryor, but hey.

Wright surely has a right to get up there and defend himself against the stunningly irresponsible manipulations of his larger context by the working press. But it seems to me he's doing few people any favors by adopting that old-timey strutting preacher stance, as he did in "taking" questions (gee, thanks) at the National Press Club the other day. That schtick is just straight up passé. As is this whole preacher business in its entirety, if you ask me. Perhaps recent developments will convince politicians to avoid them completely in future.

eta: Mike Mathias is thinking along similar lines this morning.

"Our" Lord? Oy, vey iz mir.

Last Tuesday, the sheriff of Burnett County, Dean Roland, issued a letter on government stationery trumpeting a two-hour prayer breakfast at a restaurant in the county seat, Siren, on May 1. The featured speaker is none other than Mike Gableman. Sheriff Roland writes:

Judge Gableman is a man who is deeply committed to our Lord, his religion and his profession.

Excuse me? Assuming Sheriff Roland is referring to Jesus Christ (or Allah, for that matter), that is not "our Lord," nor especially is Jesus Christ the "Lord" of Burnett, Milwaukee, or even Ashland County.

He's certainly not my "Lord," and I don't believe he's the Lord of any of my Jewish friends either. Why in the Sam Hill would Sheriff Roland use official government stationery to declare such a thing?

None too bright, that's for sure. Needless to say, Madison's Freedom From Religion Foundation has lodged a complaint. I'm not sure I'd go so far as the FFRF's wholesale condemnation of the prayer breakfast, but it's hardly appropriate — to say the least — for the expression "our Lord" to appear on official government stationery.

Falwell returns from the grave

Senator McCain hits the fruitcake trifecta.

Preachers gone wild

The latest right-wing consternation has to do with a fellow called Jeremiah Wright, who, they say, is Senator Barack Obama's "pastor." Some teevee clips have surfaced featuring Wright articulating radical politics and fulminating against social injustice in America.

The nut-wings are falling all over themselves insisting that Obama denounce Wright and all his works, because he spoke ill of the Bush administration's domestic policy, and we certainly can't have that.

Less consternation has been voiced over Obama's Republican presidential rival and fellow U.S. Senator, John McCain. McCain has lately been cavorting with John Hagee, a Grade-A delusional fundamentalist fruitcake and more recently yet another, Rod Parsley.

Parsley, who McCain describes as his "spiritual guide," raves and rants about Islam and calls on his fellow Christians to wage war against the competing Abrahamic religion, which he claims is "false." Few things are as ridiculous and amusing as one purveyor of superstition declaring it a better superstition than some other.

The Republican propensity for presidential "spiritual guides" dates back at least to the sainted Ronald Reagan, who consulted astrologers, Biblical prophecy, and other styles of necromancy to determine foreign policy.

Why is anybody surprised by preachers talking nonsense? Talking nonsense is what they do for a living. People should be more concerned about presidents and presidential candidates retaining "spiritual guides," if you ask me. That's what's disturbing.

This country was founded on principles of reason during the Age of Enlightenment. Why drag it back into the dark ages now.