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First he says that his religion doesn't matter. And then he argues for the establishment of religion by the state.

Oh, I'm sure he would deny that. Of course. He couldn't possibly admit what he's really saying. But when he's claiming that the amazing religious freedom that we enjoy in this country is not enough for him, that he wants more, what is he really saying? Government sponsorship of religion?

Which religion?

Who decides?

I ask you: Would you buy a used car from this guy?

Via AMERICAblog: A great nation deserves the truth:

So many people so insecure about their sexual orientation that they demand a Constitutional Amendment! So Rudy Giuliani has flip-flopped his position and now finds room for Constitutional homophobia in his vision of a police-state America:

Still liking Giuliani, all you moderates out there? Giuliani was against bashing gays in the US Constitution before he was for it. What a freaking hypocrite, the man is pretending on every single issue to be a "real" conservative when he's simply lying. Giuliani just might give Romney a run for his money as the biggest phony and flip-flopper among the GOP candidates....

Tony Perkins, head of the Family Research Council, told The Hill Saturday that former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani (R) would support a constitutional amendment banning gay marriage.

I suppose that's one way for social conservatives to prevent themselves from "choosing to be gay."

Once again, a poll shows that almost one-third of Americans believe that the Bible is the word of God and that every word is to be taken literally. Of those who do not believe the Bible's contents are to be taken literally, the majority believe that the book is nevertheless the actual word of God. Not surprisingly, belief in the literal meaning of the Bible is highest among those with the lowest

Via Think Progress, we learn this horror:

In 2005, the Kansas Board of Education received national ridicule when it rewrote public school standards to cast doubt on the mainstream evolution theories of Charles Darwin.

One of the board members who voted to teach intelligent design was Kenneth Willard, a conservative who is now the only member running as president-elect for the National Association of State Boards of Education. NASBE is a nonprofit organization of state school boards that “works to strengthen state leadership in educational policymaking.”

Willard was one of the Kansas board’s most vocal proponents of intelligent design....

With education scores falling behind the rest of the world, this is just what we need: a champion of willful ignorance in charge of a national education organization.

On a Saturday in Menomonie, Wisconsin, Jane1returned to her neighborhood drugstore to refill her birth control prescription, which she needed to begin taking the following day. The pharmacist on duty asked personal questions of Jane, including whether she used the medication for contraceptive purposes. When Jane acknowledged that this was indeed her objective, the pharmacist refused to refill the prescription because of his religious beliefs. When she asked where her prescription could be refilled, the pharmacist refused to answer. He went further –he refused to transfer the prescription so that it could be filled elsewhere. It was- n’t until Monday, when another pharmacist came on duty, that Jane received her birth control pills, two days after requesting the refill and one day after she was scheduled to take her next pill.2

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Today, Mata H offered four stories about religion in the news. In short, the articles report improved health for people with strong religious convictions, secular oppression of a religious blogger in Egypt, the unusually Democratic sensibilities of Hispanic Catholics, and protests by Air Force personnel with regards to browbeating harassment by fundamentalist evangelical Christians.

I noticed a very different post relating to religion today, in a post Bruce Wilson posted yesterday -- via Alternet, a fascinating blog post on Talk2Action:

It may surprise many that hardline communists were also hardline social conservatives on the matters of family and sexuality. It is the nature of extremism to incorporate far out views on these matters into state policy. The answers to this perverse mix of despotism and family values lies in the natures of religion and nationalism. It is not about left versus right because social conservatism can be found in both as tools of the state. Social conservatism, both religious and secular, when wed to nationalism and embraced as state policy, has almost always turned into an enemy of tolerance and liberty. In fact, social conservatives in the USA, led by Christian conservatives, have fought or disagreed with religious diversity, religious equality, abolition of slavery, Suffrage, desegregation, integrating the armed forces, Brown v Board of Education, mixed race marriages, respect and equality for Jews (not in MY country club!), the Civil Rights Act of 1965, gender equality laws, women in authority, working women, reproductive education, family planning, contraception, condoms, gay rights and a host of others. It was humanists, both religious and secular that banded together to win the rights movements of the past.

Recently I've had the chance to see some of the recently re-released (on DVD) documentary series, The World At War. (If you think Ken "pan-and-scan" Burns sets the standard, watch this series and think again. I cannot imagine how his upcoming series can compare with this epic achievement.)

Anyway, The World At War features a LOT of archive film footage from Germany in the years before WW2 started, and the thing that leaps right out of the screen and into the pit of your stomach is how Hitler's political rise was on the wave of a fundamentalist Christian mania. Watch the films of night-time, torch-lit rallies with crosses outnumbering swastikas. Hear the religious songs of purity and righteous glory. It will scare the crap out of you.

...this can happen. It's a truly disturbing story. Horrifying.

This is a cautionary tale for the so-called "pro-life" movement, which has been clamoring for government control of family planning as well. The only difference is that the "pro-life" folks want the government to force pregnancy, while the Chinese government is forcing abortion of pregnancy.

Either way, the government decides and the woman, the family, the people directly involved have no say in the matter.

As Ann says at Feministing:

Bottom line? Despite what U.S. anti-choicers say, no one who is pro-choice is pro-forced abortion. We are against government intervention in personal reproductive decisions -- whether it be by the U.S. Congress in banning abortion or by the Chinese government in forcing it.

The issue is this: Who decides?

Our country has an unfortunate history. When the state and federal governments have meddled in human reproduction, horrors have resulted, including forced sterilization of women and men deemed undesirable by the government. That was plenty bad enough.

Imagine now an officially sanctioned governmental policy to control human reproduction in America. If the government can force a pregnancy, it can force an abortion. Family planning in all its subtleties and considerations becomes the government's decision. In fact, it's a mockery to even call it "family planning" anymore since, in effect, family planning is taken out of the family and placed in the smoke-filled rooms of the legislatures and Congress.

Is family planning really something we want the government controlling?

Really?

Via TalkLeft, it seems Joe Klein is tilting windmills. As one of "those bloggers" who mainstream media and Beltway insider types just love to paint with just such a label, I thought I'd run through the checklist.

A left-wing extremist exhibits many, but not necessarily all, of the following attributes:

--believes the United States is a fundamentally negative force in the world.

Nope.

--believes that American imperialism is the primary cause of Islamic radicalism.

Ha!

--believes that the decision to go to war in Iraq was not an individual case of monumental stupidity, but a consequence of America’s fundamental imperialistic nature.

Utterly stupid, by an imperial fundamentalist president.

--tends to blame America for the failures of others—i.e. the failure of our NATO allies to fulfill their responsibilities in Afghanistan.

Not!

--doesn’t believe that capitalism, carefully regulated and progressively taxed, is the best liberal idea in human history.

That would be silly.

--believes American society is fundamentally unfair (as opposed to having unfair aspects that need improvement).

On the contrary.

--believes that eternal problems like crime and poverty are the primarily the fault of society.

Haven't seen a cure for these in any system.

--believes that America isn’t really a democracy.

Still is so far, I think.

--believes that corporations are fundamentally evil.

That would be a problem, considering I am a part business owner.

--believes in a corporate conspiracy that controls the world.

No, though corporate interests do carry a lot of weight.

--is intolerant of good ideas when they come from conservative sources.

Why?

--dismissively mocks people of faith, especially those who are opposed to abortion and gay marriage.

I do have a problem with people who insist on controlling others' private lives. If you are against abortion, don't have one. If you are against gay marriage, don't marry a same-sex partner. That seems "straightforward" to me, and not at all a matter of faith. (If it is, let's revisit the First Amendment, shall we?)

--regularly uses harsh, vulgar, intolerant language to attack moderates or conservatives.

Once upon a time I was a moderate. Now I don't know what these terms mean. "Conservative" used to mean Barry Goldwater, but today he couldn't get elected dog-catcher via the Republican Party. After all, "conservatives" used to be for limited government, but now they seem to want the government to control every aspect of everyone's lives.

In comments, Acid Jones writes:

Wow. It's immensely telling that many of those "extremist beliefs" are right-wing caricatures of left-wing positions.

Cut to Ann Coulter.

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So typical of mainstream media reporting today, Jocelyne Zablit's AFP article on the "controversy" over former John Edwards campaign bloggers Amanda Marcotte and Melissa McEwan tells only enough to distort reality.

The bloggers, Amanda Marcotte and Melissa McEwan, resigned following outrage over allegedly anti-Catholic rhetoric they had posted on their own blog posts before they joined the Edwards campaign last month.

The 350,000-strong Catholic League, a conservative religious group, had demanded that Edwards fire the two women and threatened to unleash a public relations blitz against his campaign.

The moral of the story? According to Zablit, bloggers are the problem.

--And she's found an "expert" on blogging, who may or may not have a blog himself but does have a book to sell, to back her angle.

"This probably is the year we learn and write new rules about how to integrate all of these new interactive instant media technology such as blogs, Facebook or YouTube into campaigns and elections," David Perlmutter, a professor and associate dean of graduate studies at the University of Kansas school of journalism, told AFP.

"Right now, a lot of people are experimenting and speculating and really just making stuff up as they go along but we're going to learn some lessons ... because nobody has written the rule book yet," added Perlmutter, author of "Blogwars: The New Political Battleground".

Be sure to run out and buy your copy.

Meanwhile, Zablit focuses on Marcotte and McEwan, while giving professional bigot Bill Donohue a pass:

The blog entries and other comments they had posted earned them the wrath of Catholic League president William Donohue who described them as "anti-Catholic, vulgar, trash-talking bigots."

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Whether you've followed the right-wing hits on the John Edwards bloggers or not, this is a must-read. (And well worth the brief on-screen ad required for Salon non-subscribers.)

That Donohue easily succeeded where a hundred right-wing bloggers failed is also unsurprising. Donohue has a long, dirty, but bizarrely successful career of conservative hit jobs. As Frances Kissling has noted, Donohue seems to take particular pleasure in silencing women.

In venues ranging from the New York Times to the major cable news networks, Donohue demanded that the Edwards campaign fire McEwan and me. The left blogosphere, furious that a smear artist might try to snap his fingers and bully a Democratic campaign into firing a staffer, pushed back hard. Liza at Culture Kitchen collected just a sampling of the hundreds of blog posts and letters that were protesting the very idea that such a manufactured controversy should have any impact on the staffing of presidential campaigns.

To me, it's rather shocking how such radical hate-filled bigots have gained currency in the mainstream media claiming that they are being oppressed by criticism of their bigotry.

Then again, maybe it's just a natural result. Most mainstream news outlets and reporters seem to work just hard enough to get a headline and a lead paragraph, and to hell with the details. The well-financed right-wing noise machine makes for convenient news. Even the respected NewsHour routinely hosts dogmatists from the well-funded Republican shill foundations to "analyze" the news.

If you build it, they will come. If you shout it loud enough, they will report it. QED.

Still, it is disturbing how these wingnut operatives -- whether freelance or funded -- wage political terrorism in American media. Amanda's Salon article offers some startling and offensive details:

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