For anyone familiar with the mantra of fundamentalist Christians, what I'm about to share will not surprise you. What might surprise you, though, is how doggedly Sharron Angle pursued the question of a high school football team wearing black jerseys for one homecoming game.

Back in 1992, Sharron Angle waged her very first public campaign -- against black football jerseys. After the local favorites had been defeated by an upstart team of newbies from a neighboring county in 1991, the coach came up with this for the following year:

Springing ahead, Jones came up with an innovative idea to fire up his charges for their 1992 homecoming game against Laughlin. Utilizing the “darkest day” theme, he suggested the Muckers could wear black jerseys to remember the previous year’s debacle.

All politics is local, and nothing ratchets up the heat faster than high school sports, schools, and religious zealots. There were two factions opposing the coach's idea. Those who objected to any color but school colors on the field, and Sharron Angle's group, who objected on these grounds:

Also opposing the black jerseys was another group including Angle, a member, if not its leader.

They argued against our charges wearing black on religious grounds.

I cannot quote scripture as they did to justify their point but the gist of their argument was that black as a color was thoroughly evil, invoking the supernatural and especially the devil my take from dictionary definitions and not from scripture .

Angle's weird and extreme position comes from the theology of light and dark articulated throughout the Bible. It's based on a literal reading of Scriptural passages invoking metaphorical applications of light and dark, culminating in Jesus' proclamation that he is the "light of the world".

But folks, this is a football team, not a theological minefield. The controversy was over the color of a jersey for a homecoming game, not the souls of young high school students throughout the land.

And in the end, they didn't wear the black jerseys, the school administration kept them, and the students were not reimbursed for their own out-of-pocket costs to buy them.

It matters. It matters, because...

Nevada voters who did not know so before now are learning that religion is a big part of any Angle campaign, just as it was so many years ago.

[...]

But in a Las Vegas R-J story last week, an Angle campaign spokesman insisted the candidate is tolerant of others’ views. That was not the case 18 years ago when her religious preference was displayed during a campaign for the county school board.

If you want a taste of vintage 1992 Sharron Angle, read her rant letter to Harry Reid. This is the intensity with which she stormed the school board over black jerseys. Holy jihad, Batman.

Sharron Angle is on the record as recently as June, 2010 claiming that there is no constitutional requirement for separation of church and state. That squares with her theological views to a "T", shaped by her long, enduring association with fundamentalist, and even activist, churches.

Angle is a member of Fellowship Community Church now, a fairly mainstream Southern Baptist church. However, she was a member of Word of Light Fellowship around the same time that she would have been waging this campaign against black football jerseys. Word of Light is an Assemblies of God church, similar to Sarah Palin's home church.

And that, my friends, puts her squarely into the dominionist/Christian Reconstructionist camp, right alongside Jim Demint, and top Republican presidential hopeful, Mike Huckabee. Oh, and Sarah Palin, of course.

Angle isn't just crazy. She is a soldier in her own holy war. It began with football jerseys, but now the stakes are much, much higher.

Are you ready for a flame-thrower? The Washington Post gives Over The Cliff a quick hit and review:

Over the Cliff: How Obama's Election Drove the American Right Insane

By John Amato and David Neiwert

PoliPoint. 284 pp. Paperback, $16.95

The gist: In November 2008, the right wing lost its mind and has yet to recover: Extremists prowl the land, fill the airwaves, preaching that America is doomed under Barack Obama.

In its own words: "The American Right's descent into madness, embodied in its takeover by right-wing populists, was more than a problem just for serious conservatives who understood that it would ultimately prove to be their destruction. The very nature of the insanity that was being unleashed posed a larger problem for the nation at large -- namely, the implicit threat of violence and extremist unrest, represented most vividly by the revival of the militia movement.

After we wrote our book there were many other violent outbursts that we obviously didn't cover. You know, like a pesky Mosque bombing or the father and son act of Jerry and Joe Kane. There are many more issues we take up in the book, but at least he got some of it right.

We're selling this book mostly through the prism of our online brothers and sisters. So far it's going very well. David and I didn't write this book because we hoped to cash in on it. Seriously, that was the last thing we thought about and it won't happen; but we thought it was important to document what we have all just witnessed and have a public record all gathered in one place.

We were interviewed last week by Mike Panantonio of Ring Of Fire, and he marveled that when he read everything in the book -- some of which he knew, some of which he did not -- it brought a new appreciation to the severity of the problem and what has unfolded before our eyes and he thanked us.

Please support your liberal authors. You can grab a copy here.

You can find it in other formats and book stores here.

distributorcap NY: The Man in the Gold-Laced Flannel Suit

The Brad Blog: Wingnut Andrew Breitbart calls for my death

Attytood: Decade From Hell

Pam's House Blend: Insane birther ad in the Washington (Moonie) Times illustrates the power of TEH STOOPID

The Gist: Rick Warren can't "take sides" on gay executions

3quarksdaily: Will be awarding four prizes every year for the best blog writing in the areas of science, philosophy, politics, and arts & literature. There's cash involved folks! The deadline for nominations is December 2

Unfortunately, Scalia's right. According to the rule of after-discovered evidence (I became familiar with it when I was a reporter and covering a similar case), an innocent man can still be put to death if the evidence that could have exonerated him should have been brought forth during the original trial. There are exceptions, but that's the gist:

WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court on Monday ordered a federal trial court in Georgia to consider the case of Troy Davis, who is on death row in state prison there for the 1989 murder of an off-duty police officer. The case has attracted international attention, and 27 former prosecutors and judges had filed a brief supporting Mr. Davis.

Seven of the witnesses against Mr. Davis have recanted, and several people have implicated the prosecution’s main witness as the actual killer of the officer, Mark MacPhail.

The Supreme Court’s decision was unsigned, only a paragraph long and in a number of respects highly unusual. It instructed the trial court to “receive testimony and make findings of fact” about whether new evidence clearly established Mr. Davis’s innocence. Justice Sonia Sotomayor, who joined the court this month, did not participate.

The decision set off a sharp debate between Justices John Paul Stevens and Antonin Scalia about Supreme Court procedure, the reach of a federal law meant to limit death row appeals and the proper treatment of claims of innocence.

“The substantial risk of putting an innocent man to death,” Justice Stevens wrote in a concurrence joined by Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Stephen G. Breyer, “clearly provides an adequate justification for holding an evidentiary hearing.”

Justice Scalia, in a dissent joined by Justice Clarence Thomas, said the hearing would be “a fool’s errand,” because Mr. Davis’s factual claims were “a sure loser.”

He went on to say that the federal courts would be powerless to assist Mr. Davis even if he could categorically establish his innocence.

“This court has never held,” Justice Scalia wrote, “that the Constitution forbids the execution of a convicted defendant who had a full and fair trial but is later able to convince a habeas court that he is ‘actually’ innocent.”

Thanks to John Cole for the comedy gold of yesterday. The folks at Red State noticed that convention-going Democrats didn't walk around waving their cheap flags on sticks all the time like good nationalist zealots Republicans do. So they set out to find all those tens of thousands of flags that had been evident in pictures of the hall but not upon the persons of Democratic attendees having lunch, shopping at the mall or going to the restroom.

Did they ask the convention organizers where the flags had gone - maybe for re-use at Invesco Field last night where there were also tens of thousands of the little beauties in evidence? No. Did they look under seats where they might have been stashed for safekeeping? No. Did they... you know, this one seemed a no-brainer for any intrepid investigator to me ... did they ask the delegates and attendees themselves? No.

They followed their own inner voices, like Bush looking for WMD in the wilderness, and headed straight for the trash.

There they found - ZOMG! - a dozen or less of those abused tens of thousands of flags, all broken and stuff from wildly being waved, in an entire dumpster of trashbags. Which must surely prove that Obama hate America. Or something.

And Obama would have gotten away with it if it wasn't for those pesky kids!

Meanwhile, on the other side of the uppitty zealot patriot fence, the GOP knows how to wave a flag with style.

This is the concept for their convention hall:

Yes, that's a massive video screen. I can't figure out whether they want to show Obama how to stage a real Reichstag Nuremberg Rally (ok, but you got the gist) or intentionally wanted a look reminiscent of the Norsefire Party out of V for Vendetta.

I read this op-ed late last night and while I agree somewhat in principle with the gist of the article, I had a problem with the construct the author took to reach his conclusions. So I bring it to the larger C&L readership; are we seeing a resurgence of liberal thinking in the US? Did any of you find the author's reasoning a little clueless, as I did?

IHT:*

These are balmy days on the American left - genuine, uncharacteristic sunniness unpolluted by some fluky political climate change. There is even talk of a - stutter, clear-throat, perish-thought - liberal resurgence.

Or, treading gingerly, a "liberal moment."

"Hell, ya, this is a liberal moment," exults Thomas Frank, author of "What's the Matter With Kansas?" - and yes, he even calls himself a "liberal" writer, eschewing the sleeker "progressive" stage name that many lefties are preferring these days. He declares this "liberal moment" loud and proud. Until the inevitable qualifier comes.

"A potentially liberal moment," Mr. Frank says, "assuming that liberal politicians can seize the moment and get beyond their usual plague of incompetence."

Oh, snap. Liberal optimism, thy name is caution and caveat.

But it is optimism nonetheless, and well-founded, too, say Mr. Frank and a broad spectrum of political thinkers and leaders. And, they say, the evidence goes beyond the obvious indicators - the ascendance of Democrats in the House and Senate, President Bush's second-term belly-flop and poll numbers showing the Democratic Party trending left and the nation's political center trending Democratic.

* This op-ed, originally printed (and linked to) in the NY Times had a registration requirement to read, and so I've found it reprinted for free access by the International Herald Tribune.