Headlines - Monday February 27

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Polifact has meditated, debated, cogitated and estimated (and, no doubt, masturbated), and after serious consideration of the kind that mere mortal non-journalists are clearly incapable of undertaking, they've reconsidered their judgment about whether 40% is a majority. Let it be known to all comers that Marco Rubio's statement that a majority of Americans are conservative is no longer "mostly true", even though no poll shows a majority believing that. The masters of truth have spoken once more, and forevermore, or at least until they speak on this matter again, Rubio's statement is "half true".

I don't know what's more pathetic, the half-assedness of this correction, or the fact that it took almost two weeks for them to come up with it. (Via Jay Rosen, who should be harder on them for this.)

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Richie Rich over here just cannot stop reminding everyone that he's a special and obscenely wealthy snowflake. Mitt won't be watching the Daytona 500, if it ever happens, 'cause he's not a huge racing fan but HAHAHA some of his best friends do own racing teams, he quickly jostles to add for some damn reason. Could these team owners maybe get M.I.T.T. a new pit crew, to do a little much needed maintenance, oh, and maybe also to 'accidentally' disable the vocal apparatus? That would be really friendly of them! READ MORE »

You gotta give it to him. He a consistent One Percenter asshole

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Mormon Numbers Not Adding Up: Mormonism is no longer one of America's fastest-growing faiths. What happened?

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The things that make little Ricky vomit:

Former senator Rick Santorum (R-Pa.) on Sunday defended a statement he made last October in which he said that he "almost threw up" when he read John F. Kennedy's 1960 Houston address on the role of religion in public life.

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He went on to note that the First Amendment "says the free exercise of religion — that means bringing everybody, people of faith and no faith, into the public square."

"Kennedy for the first time articulated the vision saying, 'No, faith is not allowed in the public square. I will keep it separate.' Go on and read the speech. 'I will have nothing to do with faith. I won't consult with people of faith.' It was an absolutist doctrine that was abhorrent at the time of 1960."

Later in the interview, Stephanopoulos asked Santorum, "You think you wanted to throw up?"

"Well, yes, absolutely," Santorum replied. "To say that people of faith have no role in the public square? You bet that makes you throw up. What kind of country do we live that says only people of non-faith can come into the public square and make their case? That makes me throw up."

Of course, that isn't what Kennedy said at all. What Kennedy was stating was that his decision-making would not be held hostage to the demands of the Vatican (or any other church leadership):

I believe in an America that is officially neither Catholic, Protestant nor Jewish; where no public official either requests or accepts instructions on public policy from the Pope, the National Council of Churches or any other ecclesiastical source; where no religious body seeks to impose its will directly or indirectly upon the general populace or the public acts of its officials; and where religious liberty is so indivisible that an act against one church is treated as an act against all.

For while this year it may be a Catholic against whom the finger of suspicion is pointed, in other years it has been, and may someday be again, a Jew— or a Quaker or a Unitarian or a Baptist. It was Virginia's harassment of Baptist preachers, for example, that helped lead to Jefferson's statute of religious freedom. Today I may be the victim, but tomorrow it may be you — until the whole fabric of our harmonious society is ripped at a time of great national peril.

Nowhere in the speech did he dictate that people of faith could have no role in public life. Nowhere. Santorum is lying or stupid or both, and I'm going to go with both and throw in a dash of evil.

What Santorum wants is not religious freedom. What he wants is the freedom to force you to live by his religious beliefs.

(I suppose he's okay then with government interfering with religion, too, because if you break down the separation, government can meddle in religion just as easily as religion meddling with government. That's the side of this debate they don't mention. The door swings both ways)

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Santorum said on This Week:

I don't believe in an America where the separation between church and state is absolute. The idea that the church can have no influence or no involvement in the operation of the state is absolutely antithetical to the objectives and visions of our country.

This is stupid on so many levels.

Obviously the church is just one of many special interest groups that really does have some say over matters of state. That's simply a reality of representative government, whether we like it or not. But more importantly I really don't think that Rick Santorum understands what he's saying here, and the implications for freedom of religion.

It's almost as though social conservatives think that religion and government were kept separate because effete liberal elitists wanted a hedonistic society unfettered by the moral constraints provided by religious institutions. But nothing could be further from the truth. It was the Baptists and Thomas Jefferson who really lobbied hard for the initial cleaving. They saw the political power of the Anglican Church as a real threat to religious freedom and decided that the best way to preserve that freedom was to keep government out of church business, and vice versa.

Fast-forward a few hundred years and you have guys like Santorum who apparently don't understand the first thing about the point of keeping the two institutions a healthy distance apart from one another. This is either straight-up opportunism dressed in religious drag or it's one of the dumbest things to have fled a politician's mouth in, well, days.

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If, as he claims, colleges are just hotbeds of liberal indoctrination, how did Rick Santorum's conservatism survive being ridiculed at Pennsylvania State University (where

he earned a Bachelor of Arts degree), at the University of Pittsburgh (where he earned a Master of Business Administration degree), and at the Dickinson School of Law (where  he earned a Doctor of Law degree)?  And if, as he also claims, going to college is a sign of snobbery, wouldn't his three college degrees make Rick Santorum a super-snob?

 

Flashback: In 2006, Rick Santorum Wanted To Send All Pennsylvanians To College

 

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Taibbi: Arizona Debate: Conservative Chickens Come Home to Roost

 

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If God wants you to have a baby, he'll give you one from regular fucking. Any other way to get a baby? That's from Satan.

Speaking at the end of three-day convention on diagnosing and treating infertility at the Vatican, Pope Benedict XVI slammed artificial procreation and fertility treatments. Marriage was the only place to create a human being, he said. The comments reaffirm the decision Catholic leadership has held on artifical reproduction since 2008. "The human and Christian dignity of procreation, in fact, doesn't consist in a 'product,'" he said, " but in its link to the conjugal act, an expression of the love of the spouses of their union, not only biological but also spiritual." The pope is pressing for a ban on artificial procreation and called on science and fertility experts to resist "easy income, or even worse the arrogance of taking the place of the Creator."

Another agreement between the Vatican and the AFA.

 

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The death toll from Quran-burning protests now stands at 30.

KABUL, Afghanistan — Demonstrators hurled grenades at a U.S. base in northern Afghanistan, and a gun battle left two Afghans dead and seven NATO troops injured Sunday in the escalating crisis over the burning of Muslim holy books at an American airfield.

More than 30 people have been killed, including four U.S. troops, in six days of unrest.

Meanwhile, Santorum is egging them on.

What would Jesus do?

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