YES YES YES

Under the strong leadership of God's President we've been safe for 7 years. But if we abandon God now, we could be hit again. Yes, we can vote for George W. Bush in 2008...

The important thing to understand about so-called "term limits" is that they are man's law, not God's Law. The God who parted the Red Sea is surely not worried about so-called "term limits"... Presidential term limits are not in the Bible...

Millions of partriotic (sic) Americans need to know that we can write in George Bush for president in 2008. Never underestimate the power of a bumper sticker to get the word out.

I love this country.

(Via.)

Huckabee: Amend the Constitution to "God's standards"

EWW EWW EWW THEOCRACY GET IT OFF ME GET IT OFF ME

“I have opponents in this race who do not want to change the Constitution. But I believe it’s a lot easier to change the Constitution than it would be to change the word of the living god. And that’s what we need to do — is to amend the Constitution so it’s in God’s standards rather than try to change God’s standards so it lines up with some contemporary view of how we treat each other and how we treat the family.”

BLEARRRRRRRRRRRGH

This generation of zealots is producing the next

Some of you may have heard about the disruption of the first Hindi invocation in the US Senate. Three people in the gallery started shouting about 'idolatry' until they were dragged out. 

Anyway, it turns out that that shameful behavior was sponsored by Flip Benham and his group Operation Save America.

Operation Save America has a significant presence in Kansas, and I wrote a story  on the group for my school newspaper (tried to make it objective, but my disgust probably seeps through.)

Flip Benham and his followers set up outside a local high school, accosting high school girls who they thought were dressed too revealingly and harassing gays. They aimed bullhorns at the school and disrupted classes. So it's not exactly surprising that Benham and his organization would add one more illegal act to their list.

I've spent a fair amount of time around these extremists-- Phelps followers, Benham followers, and run-of-the-mill zealots--but I still can't figure out whether they are doing it because of authentic belief (in my opinion, authentic insanity) or because of a desire for fame.  For the Phelps clan, it is obviously fame, which is why local media doesn't cover their daily outrageous acts. The same goes for Flip.

But I also met followers at various protests, people my own age and younger, who spouted the same lines and put on the same attitude as their parents. I couldn't help thinking,"What kind of chance do they have for a normal life?" One kid I spoke to said that he was home-schooled and that he spent all of his time driving from protest to protest. He seemed perfectly nice, but a conspiracy of adults was systematically wrecking his mind.

While of course I'm angry with these three shouters in the Senate chamber, I also feel pity for them. They've probably always occupied a kind of parallel universe where every adult they know and respect affirms insanity, and everything outside of the cult is deemed the temptation of the devil.

This generation of religious radicals is producing the next as we speak, and I've spent enough time observing the camps, the conferences, and the protests to say with confidence that they couldn't be said to be failing. And there isn't any really good way to break up the party. The current methods of fundamentalists are very effective and are used on the very young.

So we should get used to behavior like what we saw in the Senate. These radicals aren't going away any time soon. 

When Senator Hagel Upstages Jake Gyllenhaal

It's a rare day indeed when I read something in GQ, the pseudo-Cosmo for men. But with hotter male models. Go figure. 

“We have always, certainly since World War II, had the moral high ground in the world. But these secret prisons and the treatment at Guantánamo destroy all of that. We ought to shut down Guantánamo. There shouldn’t be any secret prisons. Why do we need those? What are we afraid of? Here we are, the greatest nation the world has ever seen. Why can’t we let the Red Cross into our prisons? Why do we deny they exist? Why do we keep them locked up? What are we afraid of? Why aren’t we dealing with Iran and Syria?”

…

“We are living through one of the most transformative periods in history. If we are going to make it, we need a far greater appreciation and respect for others, or we’re going to blow up mankind. Look at what zealotry can do. Religious zealotry has been responsible for killing more people than any other thing. Look at the Middle East today. It’s all about religion. We need to move past those divisions and learn to be tolerant and respectful. If we go out there full of intolerance and hatred, we’ll never make it.”