A month ago, congressional Republicans were so desperate to avoid discussing the substance of U.S. policy towards Iraq, they decided a newspaper ad from MoveOn.org was the single biggest threat to Western Civilization in recent history. The coordinated hissy fit was a transparent effort to distract attention from the issue at hand, but it was […]
First up from The God Machine this week is an amusing story out of Virginia Beach, where a student at TV preacher Pat Robertson’s Regent University isn’t impressed with his school’s founder — so Regent has recommended he seek pychiatric help. Seriously. [Adam] Key, a bearded 23-year-old with a tableau of tattoos, would seem an […]
Guest Post by Morbo Here’s just what we don’t need: Hordes of crazed, anti-gay Russian extremists with a proclivity toward violence invading major U.S. cities. But like it or not, here they come. Several progressive organizations have reported recently on a scary group called “The Watchmen on the Walls.” Based in Latvia, the Ukraine and […]
Guest Post by Morbo “Intelligent Design” advocate Michael Behe of Lehigh University has a new book out titled The Edge of Evolution. One reviewer notes something interesting: In this book, Behe comes right and admits that common descent is a fact. Behe writes that both chimp and human DNA manifest similar errors in pseudogenes. He […]
Guest Post by Morbo The religious extremists who run fundamentalist Christian academies in California have a problem: The kids they churn out are having a hard time getting accepted into state-owned colleges because the claptrap they have been taught has left them ill-prepared. But no worries, a group that represents the fundie academies has a […]
All eyes were on Mitt Romney at yesterday’s Values Voter Summit (a.k.a. PanderFest 2007), with the former Massachusetts governor anxious to win over the religious right. How’d he do? It’s a challenge for a Mormon candidate to overcome evangelical skepticism, but Romney told the faithful — by one count, there were nearly 3,000 attendees at […]
Today’s edition of quick hits. * The aftermath in Pakistan: “Former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto, her return from exile shattered by a suicide attack that killed up to 136 people, blamed militants Friday for trying to kill her and said she would not “surrender our great nation” to them…. ‘There was one suicide squad from […]
Six weeks ago, Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) said we would see “a major breakthrough” within “weeks” on political reconciliation in Iraq, which he believes is unfolding at “breakneck speed.” It’s one of those quotes that looks increasingly ridiculous all the time. A principal architect of Iraq’s interim constitution, who resigned in August as one of […]
Mitt Romney got to show off some his foreign policy chops while campaigning in South Carolina. The former Massachusetts governor said the U.N. Human Rights Council has repeatedly condemned Israel while taking no action against nations with repressive regimes. “The United Nations has been an extraordinary failure of late,” Romney said in response to a […]
The Miami Herald reported a few weeks ago that Sen. Mel Martinez (R-Fla.), elected chairman of the Republican National Committee in January, planned to step down once a GOP presidential nominee emerges. Martinez expected to make way for his successor some time in February, so the ’08 nominee can have his team in place for […]