Fundie Christians are, indeed, a bunch of control freaks. And much like their Middle Eastern sharia-loving counterparts, they won't be happy until marriages are arranged by parents without the parties concerned actually even meeting before the ceremony. I suppose this law, if passed, will result in hoards of flashlight-carrying Sex Police patrolling the local lovers' lanes.

But really, it's that they just can't bear the thought of someone having unpunished fun somewhere:

MEMPHIS, TN - (WMC-TV) - Tennessee senators approved an update to the state's abstinence-based sex education law that includes warnings against "gateway sexual activity."

In a new family life instructions bill, holding hands and kissing could be considered gateways to sex. Planned Parenthood said that allowing state government to define local sex education curriculum could backfire.

According to a 2009 Youth Risk Behavior Study, 61 percent of Memphis City high school students and 27 percent of middle school students have had sex. That's higher than the national average.

Planned Parenthood said these numbers are why a new sex education bill promoting abstinence is not realistic.

"If the state of Tennessee gets to create the curriculum, it has to create something that umbrella reflects everyone," said Planned Parenthood Director of Education Elokin CaPese.

Tennessee House Bill 3621 and Senate Bill 3310 are currently up for debate.

In the bill, a uniformed policy on sex education is defined with terms like "gateway sexual activity." Also listed are statewide instructions on how to teach family life curriculum.

[...] If an instructor goes beyond the curriculum, the bill gives parents more legal rights, stating, "The parent or legal guardian shall have a cause of action against the instructor or organization for actual damages."

State: Ohio

Type of election: Primary

How it works: 63 delegates are at stake. 48 delegates are awarded in winner-take-all congressional districts. Santorum submitted only a partial slate of delegates by the deadline. If he wins in those districts, he can only be awarded only the number of delegates he submitted. The remaining delegates will be designated unbound until a three-member panel from the Republican party's central committee decides who the delegates will be appointed by. The remaining 15 delegates will be allocated to any candidate who gets a majority of the statewide vote or distributed proportionately among any candidates who get at least 20 percent of the vote.

Official election results: Ohio Secretary of State

Republican candidates: Newt Gingrich, Ron Paul, Mitt Romney and Rick Santorum (all others have dropped out or are polling at less than 1 percent)

Democratic candidates: There is no Democratic presidential primary.

Previous performance: In 2008, Romney dropped out prior to the primary, but still received 5 percent of the vote and finished fourth. Paul finished third with slightly fewer votes. Obama finished second with 45 percent of the vote.

Newspapers: Cincinnati Enquirer, Cleveland Plain Dealer, Columbus Dispatch, Toledo Blade, full list

Television stations: Full list

Progressive blogs: Buckeye State Blog, Ohio Daily Blog, Plunderbund

Latest polling: New York Times:

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Democrats: Vote Santorum. For now. Really enjoy it.

Many of you are already aware of the push by Markos and others to promote Democrats voting in open primaries. To many, this has been the cue to break out the fainting couch. Sigh.

To any who oppose such tactics on moral grounds, one might ask if they're part of the same group of people who oft bemoan the passive, compromise-y tactics of the current administration. Be the change you've been waiting for, and so forth.

To those who say Santorum is an actual threat in national polls because Rasmussen has him up by three amongst left-handed seniors or whatever: whatever. Careful observers will note that in a field of candidates this jaw-droppingly lame, everybody gets a taste of sweet sweet candy--if only for a moment.

So, feel free to disagree--but dirty your hands, say I. Tomorrow, America's mitten can take off the gloves.

In a Time Magazine special earlier this year, Reihan Salam rubbed his hands together excitedly and wrote this giddy little prediction:

Faced with the burden of financing the decades-long retirement of aging boomers, many of the young embrace a new underground economy, a largely untaxed archipelago of communes, co-ops, and kibbutzim that passively resist the power of the granny state while building their own little utopias.

Rural Tennessee -- at least this particular area of rural Tennessee -- looks a lot like Reihan's vision. Welcome to Gene Cranick's world, where taxes are anathema and for some communities, the opt-in model for public services leaves lives covered in ashes and whispers of the consequences of pure, unadulterated libertarian utopia. I agree with digby on this one -- it's not Randian or utopian or much of anything beyond just plain mean.

Glenn Beck thinks an opt-in fire department is just a terrific idea:

If you don't pay your $75 then that hurts the fire department. They can't use those resources and you would be sponging off your neighbor's $75 if they put out your neighbor's house and you didn't pay for it.

Gene Cranick, the homeowner, has a pretty practical response:

Why should I want to put up a business or build a new home around when they're not going to do you -- treat you right. And another thing is...part of my tax dollars comes back to this town, I think, for fire trucks...

See? That's the real problem here. This guy paid taxes and his tax dollars bought those pretty fire trucks, paid for fire hydrants and the water, but a failure to pay the $75 pay-to-spray fee cost him his house. Not just his house, but it also did damage to his neighbor's house and it killed his pets --- three dogs and a cat.

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The contemptible American Family Association is no more Christian than Satan himself. The latest remarks from their evil leader Bryan Fischer about how Jesus would have allowed the Cranick's home to burn are just plain evil. Indulge me, please, as I address my response directly to this sad excuse for a hollow human. I started this post intending to refute his screed point by point and soon realized I didn't really want to subject you all to a Biblical pissing contest.

John Amato touched on this yesterday in his post on "Feminized Christianity" identifying Fischer as the proponent of this nonsense. Fischer supposes that Christians have gone all soft on humanity and stuff, embracing their inner woman instead of the strong, authoritative man person lurking in all of this.

There's only one word for this kind of Christian: toxic. Toxic. Toxic, as in nuclear waste spread over the entire country in varying degrees of potency until the cancer takes over and subsumes the entire society in a wave of hate, fear and loathing. This isn't Christianity; it's a sick authoritarian hateful person masquerading like a wolf in sheep's clothing. Yeah, the Bible has some things to say about impostors and pretenders in society and the church, too.

Fischer missed the point of the passage he relied upon to make his case entirely. The point of the parable he told is simply to say "don't be complacent." Don't assume you can proclaim faith without actually doing something with it. That's the point, and it's made in three different parables. What Fischer demonstrates is exactly what is being preached against, not "feminized Christianity".

And then there's his closer, which makes me gnaw my fists in frustration.

(Essentially what Mr. Cranick wants is “guaranteed issue” for fire protection. This is the same thing that is going to destroy the health care industry, as it is already starting to do under RomneyCare in Massachusetts. If you can wait til you get sick before applying for insurance, and the insurance company has to provide it, everybody will just wait til they get sick to get insurance and pretty soon nobody will have insurance or health care, either one.)

No, actually what Mr. Cranick wanted was grace -- the ability to pay whatever he needed to pay at that moment and in that time to get them to turn on the damned hoses. What he wanted was someone to say yes, we will accept your perfectly good money and turn the water on for you. What he wanted was forgiveness, which is above all else, the foundation of Christian values and principles. That's what Mr. Cranick wanted.

The guaranteed issue argument is just Fischer's way of playing politics with a spiritual issue, but that's nothing new for this detestable organization. This is the same Bryan Fischer who blamed the Sea World trainer for her own death because Sea World didn't kill the killer whale after it killed the first time, suggests that children of lesbians are somehow damaged, advocates for nullification and defends Taliban Dan Webster against Alan Grayson, calling Grayson a "miserable creature".

Whether one is a Christian or not, Fischer does a great disservice to those of us who embrace that form of Christianity he derides as "feminized." Those of us who believe we shouldn't judge our neighbors, should forgive those who do us wrong, and share what we have with others are being painted with Fischer's broad, ugly, stinky brush.

We don't know what Jesus would have done if he were in the vicinity of Gene Cranick. We don't generally send rabbis out to fight fires, after all. It's likely he probably would have called out to the crowd for someone to help the man put out the fire. But there is no example in the bible -- NONE -- where Jesus stood by and let someone suffer to teach them a lesson. Jesus suffered, but he did not bring suffering on others. He fed them. He taught them. He led them. But he did not hurt them.

Bryan Fischer's version of Christianity is not one I recognize. It feels far more like Old Testament cruelty, brought down on the poor and disenfranchised in order to consolidate power. It feels like evil.

Campaign analyst Charlie Cook says so far, it's still unlikely that we'll see a Republican sweep in 2010:

To put it another way, as things stand now, Republicans could win every competitive House race and still come up one seat short. That won't be the case, however, if there is further erosion in the ranks of the solid and likely Democratic seats. Although Democrats can take some solace from the fact that no party has ever lost every single competitive House race, none of the four lawmakers who have recently added their names to the retirement list -- Brian Baird of Washington, Bart Gordon of Tennessee, Dennis Moore of Kansas, and John Tanner of Tennessee -- was considered particularly vulnerable a year ago.

For Republicans to take control of the House, more Democrats in swing districts would have to retire. There will be more, but how many?

If 10 or 12 more seats rated as solid or likely Democratic shift to the "lean Democratic" or "toss-up" columns, the fight for control will become much more serious. Washington is awash in rumors of other veteran Democrats contemplating voluntary exits. Some serve in safely Democratic districts, but others represent places not unlike the districts of Baird, Gordon, Moore, and Tanner. Also helping the GOP is its best House recruiting in a long time. A crop of strong candidates will help Republicans win more than their share of contests if the political environment remains what it is today.

Winds that began shifting against Democrats around the end of June, during the House cap-and-trade vote and the beginning of the health care debate, are now transforming their party's potential problems into real ones. That change is causing predictable talk of a 1994-style Republican landslide strong enough to flip the Senate. That talk, though, is just so much hot air.

Anyone with the slightest knowledge of the Senate's 2010 lineup of contests couldn't take such talk seriously. For Republicans to seize the Senate, they would have to hold all six of their open seats, which is quite plausible. All 12 of the GOP incumbents up for re-election would also have to win, which is quite likely. The Republicans would then have to pick up the Delaware and Illinois open seats that Democrats now hold -- a feat that is not difficult to imagine.

However -- and this is where the going would get rough for the Republicans -- they would need to defeat Michael Bennet in Colorado, Barbara Boxer in California, Christopher Dodd in Connecticut, Kirsten Gillibrand in New York, Blanche Lincoln in Arkansas, Harry Reid in Nevada, and Arlen Specter (or Joe Sestak if he wins the primary) in Pennsylvania, plus Republican Gov. John Hoeven of North Dakota would have to run and beat Byron Dorgan.

No party in history has ever run the table that completely. And even then, the GOP would come up one seat short.

The fragility of the Democrats' Senate majority is visible, though, if you look toward 2012, when 23 Democratic seats will be on the line compared with just nine Republican ones, and ahead to 2014, when 20 Democratic seats but only 13 Republican ones will be up for grabs.

Just as much has changed in the past year, much could change in the next. What the past tells us is that it takes a truly major event -- such as the 9/11 attacks of 2001 or the 1998 impeachment of President Clinton -- to improve the fortunes of the president's party going into a midterm election. Only one thing seems certain: 2010 won't be dull.

Apparently,Senator Diane Black (R-TN) isn't ready to part company with her racist staffer, Sherri Goforth. Goforth, who sent out a highly offensive photo of President Obama on an official government e-mail account received a letter of reprimand from Senator Black, but as of yet, still has her job. The letter of reprimand has been made public, Think Progress has it and more:

As the Knoxville News Sentinel reports, the Tennessee Democratic Party has obtained a copy of this “strongly worded reprimand,” which is barely a slap on the wrist. Black advises Goforth not to send communications that are “derogatory regarding any minority” and adds, “I look forward to working together in the future within these guidelines.” The letter:

The pressure is on Senator Black to fire the racist she has working in her office, but she's not budging. When Ron Christie, a former aide to Dick Cheney thinks you should go, you know you've screwed up. Contact her and let her know how you feel. Remember, be polite.

Some of you may recall from last week, this little racist gem from Rusty DePass, a GOP activist from South Carolina who referred to an escaped gorilla as an ancestor of Michelle Obama. And now, from the state of Tennessee, we bring you the Obama "Spook" photo e-mailed from a GOP Senator's office -- on an official state e-mail account, no less:

Sherri Goforth, a legislative staffer working for Sen. Diane Black, a Gallatin Republican, confirmed to Nashville Is Talking that she sent around an email depicting portraits of all the U.S. presidents — but on the last slot, where Barack Obama should be, there is just an empty black spot with two eyes (see right).

Get it? Huh? Not really…

When asked whether she understood the controversial nature of sending the email on her state account, Goforth replied, “I went on the wrong email and I inadvertently hit the wrong button … I’m very sick about it, and it’s one of those things I can’t change or take back.” Goforth told NIT she received a letter of reprimand from Sen. Black.

She's sick about it alright -- sick that she got caught and exposed as a racist -- not because she sent out a highly offensive, racist image of our president. Not to worry dear C&L'ers, Goforth is keeping her job, for the moment:

Update 2:Black confirmed that she had reprimanded Goforth verbally and in writing. She said no further action was anticipated.

Read on...

Wonkette had this to add:

NOTHING as funny as the idea of … people with dark complexions. Even when you’re just sending the Funnies to proper white folk, there is still often a “N.L.” who will complain about old-fashioned Southern comedy.

This is just a whole lot of awesomeness. Long story short, Tennesse Democrats decided to mess around with state Republicans and voted to elect the first GOP speaker of the statehouse in almost forty years. Watch the frantic elephant stampede in all it's glory above and read all the pissypants quotes below.

Tennessean:

New Tennessee Speaker of the House Kent Williams "lied" to fellow Republicans Tuesday by ignoring the party's choice for the job and joining with 49 Democrats in voting for himself, new state Rep. Joe Carr said.

"There is history in Tennessee politics for this kind of shenanigans," Carr, a newly elected Republican from the Lascassas community northeast of Murfreesboro, said during a phone interview.

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Carr was one of 49 Republicans voting in the minority for Rep. Jason Mumpower of Bristol to be the next speaker.

"I don't think we should be surprised," he said of the vote. "What caught us off guard is that someone went back on their word. Then he votes for himself to do the very thing he said he wouldn't do, which is self-serving politics."

Let me say for the record that I am not particularly enamored of this line of questioning, because I fail to see how it materially affects one's job performance as POTUS. There are several of our finest presidents who would not have held up to that scrutiny. However, since the Republicans crossed this threshold during the Clinton administration, making it an issue worth millions of taxpayer dollars to investigate and prosecute, it is only fair to hold them to the same standards.
Cliff Schecter:

(F)rom a town hall meeting in Nashville, Tennessee Monday, mixed in with platitudes about gay marriage, we get a nice little comment from this questioner on the sanctity of marriage in McCain's life--or more to the point, sanctimony. Here is a rough transcript of her question to The Morally Righteous One, which comes at the beginning of the video (it includes McCain's answer to this question and a previous on on Hillary Clinton):

My second and final question, you talk a lot about the character issue...and...like you, um, I was opposed to gay marriage, I was in always in favor of civil unions but the basic definition of marriage....but, then I get to thinking, that is based on what we consider to be the sanctity of marriage. There is nothing....you see long-term couples splitting up, it's, it's just crazy...I know that you, your own situation, you're going to have to address that in the campaign. Infidelity is just a terrible cancer on this country....and I think if we're going to talk about...gay marriage, it has to be in the context of the preservation of marriage...which I just don't see it, I think we need to make it more difficult for people to get married, or whatever we need to do..if that's...if we're going to be consistent.

McCain ignored that part of the question, of course.