Reverend Manny and the Twilight Empire: How Americans for Prosperity spent its summer and Koch's millions

TalkLeft: Federal Court Grants Injuction Against Stem Cell Research

ProPublica: For Mosques, 'Anywhere but There' means nowhere

Norwegianity: Fine thuning their campaign strategies

The Roger Ailes we like on Libertarian bull pucky

Law & Disorder: Your fears confirmed: "up to" broadband speeds are bogus

Meet the Press Video Review

9/11 Commisioners

Kean and Hamilton.

Video

Morality in America

Falwell,Sharpton,Land, and Wallis.

DR. FALWELL: Jim, let me ask you a question. Did you vote for John Kerry?

REV. WALLIS: I did vote for John Kerry.

DR. FALWELL: Now, he is pro-choice. How can you as an ordained minister--you are an ordained minister, right?

REV. WALLIS: Jerry--Jerry...

DR. FALWELL: How could you vote for some--I wouldn't vote for my mother if she were pro-choice.

Video Part I

Russert: And, Reverend Land, you went on to explain it this way: "If a husband does not want his wife to work outside the home, then she should not work outside the home." Is that your vision of America?

DR. LAND: It's my vision for Christian families. I don't think that the law has anything to do with it. That was a statement about the theological belief of Southern Baptists.

Video Part II

Bill Gertz And The Sword Of Darkness Where in Washington, D.C. is Sun Myung Moon? National security reporter Bill Gertz has been described by employer Reverend Moon as an agent of prophecy.

Bill Gertz, Washington Times reporter and devout member of the Unification Church, has recently drawn an awful lot of attention for stories no one but the Times will print: stories about Chechen terrorists sneaking across the Rio Grande, Russians pilfering the missing Iraqi explosives, and other marvels. Says Joshua Marshall: "You can't make this stuff up. Or, I guess, actually you can."

During an exchange on Tim Russert's show last weekend about the Reverend Jeremiah Wright, Christopher Hitchens mocked his fellow Englishman Andrew Sullivan when he forgets the second point he was trying to make.

Download | play Download | play

Transcript via MM:

SULLIVAN: Two things. One, it's important to clear up that he [Wright] did not say "The Jews are going to get you" in some conspiratorial, classic anti-Semitic fashion. I think that's just --

HITCHENS: He [Wright] thinks only Jews are going to object to [Rev. Louis] Farrakhan and [Libyan leader Moammar] Gadhafi. Excuse me?

SULLIVAN: No, he didn't say "only."

HITCHENS: No, but --

SULLIVAN: Again, you keep playing with that quote. We're happy to have it on the record. And now you've made me forget my second point, which is --

HITCHENS: Oh, well, don't be such a lesbian. Get on with it.

At least Sullivan doesn't seem to take offense to Hitchens' remark.

Good job everyone.

Joe Sudbay of AmericaBlog and Reverend Lennox Yearwood delivered 32,000 signatures to the FEC, cosigning the complaint filed last Thursday against John McCain and his campaign. It took three reams of paper and 1,400 pages to print it all out. This morning at a McCain event in Alexandria, McCain was introduced as a "hero" because of his work in campaign finance reform. Right. The guy who helped to write the law now doesn't want to obey it, just because there's nobody around to enforce it...read on

You can still cosign the complaint here. If you missed the story you can read all about it here. As Jane rightfully says. The law applies to everyone else---except---John McCain. I'm working on a fun little contest that I should have up and running in a few days about this very issue.

We haven't done a Holy Crap at the blog round-up for a while, and lately the great blog Talk2Action has had some doozys:

An evangelical group promoted by the Pentagon to "entertain the troops" has violent, homoerotic t-shirts available.

Reverend Wiley Drake, former Vice President of the Southern Baptist Convention (yeah.) is calling for "imprecatory prayer" against church/state separation advocates Americans United. Wiley mentions that his followers should pray for God to "smite" the AU folks. Punchline: Drake was challenged by AU for using church letterhead to endorse Mike Huckabee.

I was having a hard time holding back the laughs before, and then the General wrote one of his special missives to Drake.

JohnEdwards.com:

Almost 40 years ago the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. stood at the pulpit in Riverside Church and, with the full force of his conscience, denounced the war in Vietnam -- calling it a "tragedy that threatened to drag our nation down to dust."

As Dr. King put it then, there comes a time when silence is a betrayal -- not only of one's personal convictions, or even of one's country alone, but also of our deeper obligations to humanity.

Today, another president is trying to escalate another war. And once again, silence is betrayal.

Continue reading »

Obviously, in light of this week's revelations, evangelist Ted Haggard is going to have some trouble keeping his old political allies. I suppose a guy learns who is real friends are after he's been accused of having a meth-filled fling with a gay prostitute.

Considering the fact that the president considers loyalty one of the most important qualities a person can have, will Bush stand by his friend Haggard in his time of need? Not so much. Consider yesterday's White House press gaggle:

Q: This Reverend Haggard out in Colorado, is he someone who is close to the White House? There had been reports that he was on the weekly call with evangelicals. Is that true?

FRATTO: I'm actually told that that's not true, that he has — in terms of a weekly call that he has? He had been on a couple of calls, but was not a weekly participant in those calls. I believe he's been to the White House one or two times. I don't want to confine it to a specific number because it would take a while to figure out how many times. But there have been a lot of people who come to the White House….

Yep, now that Haggard is mired in scandal, his old friend the president asks, "Ted who?"

For the Bush gang to now say that Haggard is just some guy who might have been to the White House once or twice is simply wrong. For that matter, it's part of a pattern for a president who considers loyalty a one-way street.

Habeas corpus has been but a memory for quite some time and the murderers of Democracy are systematically destroying what it means to be American...but put the responsibility where it belongs....and thanks again

CorrenteWire: According to whitehouse.gov. Bush was against torture before he was for it

Discourse.net: A company with a death wish...

HOLY CRAP: Orrin Hatch's song for Reverend Moon...House passes measure to chill establishment-clause lawsuits....With the Party of Dobson...is Bush's "just a comma" remark another coded message to the religious right?

Andrew Sullivan: I can't remember linking Sully before, but anytime a rightie comes to his senses, it's worth noting

World O' Crap: Malkin goes...er..Malkin

The Osterley Times: Torture in Iraq is worse than under Saddam. But then, torture is now officially an American 'value'...according to the Good Germans of the Right

Talk To Action: Blogging from the "2006 Value voters summit"...and here's some truly amazing Holy Crap: imagine politicians, right-wing Christian leaders and President George H.W. Bush all convened at a shadowy event hosted by Pat Boone in honor of Reverend Sun Myung Moon

Barrelhouse: A book George Allen would love! I'm not sure what my favorite part is: when the brown people take over the nice white family's entire house, or when the brown man is described as an evil murderer and "a follower of Darwinism."

Boregasm: Blogger Hart Williams spent two-and-a-half months writing this series on Howard Rich and his efforts to take the "local" out of local ballot initiatives and create them from afar. Williams was interviewed last night on the PBS show, NOW...and go listen to FAIR founder, Jeff Cohen on his adventures inside the belly of the corporate media beast while working at Fox, MSNBC, and CNN.

OFF THE BEATEN PATH: Intrepid Liberal Journal...Incongruous...The Arabist..
...MoxieGrrrl