Political Ruminations

Mormonism and Torture

Would Romney’s Mormon faith keep him from using torture as a tool against enemies or perceived enemies? Andrew Sullivan doesn’t think so:

Bruce Jessen - a critical figure in developing the Gestapo-derived torture techniques used by the Bush-Cheney administration - has just become the bishop of Spokane’s 6th Ward in the Mormon church. Torture did not come up in any of the presidential debates. But we know now that Romney's Mormon faith will not stand in the way of its return. More on Jessen's history of bringing torture into the heart of America is here.

RELATED POSTS:

+ Obama and Romney Quotes About Torture

Bigotry Swings Around and Bites Romney

This is just too perfect, emphasis mine:

A new poll out Tuesday found that Southern whites—long considered one of the linchpins of the Republicans’ so-called Southern strategy—are bothered by the GOP candidate’s wealth and religion. According to the Reuters/Ipsos poll conducted over several months in 11 states from Virginia to Texas, 38 percent of Bible Belt voters said they are less likely to vote for a candidate who is “very wealthy” than one who isn’t—and many viewed Mormonism as a cult.

Oh noes…………..

Morning Quote: Mitt Romney

According to Steve Benen, Mitt Romney continues to lie about the Affordable Care Act:

“The employees of the Catholic Church have to be provided by the Catholic Church with health care that gives them free contraceptive and free sterilization treatments and morning-after pills despite the fact that this violates the conscience of the Catholic Church.”

Romney is lying.

Thomas Jefferson Quotes on Religion

Having recently entered into an argument with a Republican who, as many do, claimed that the United States was founded as a Christian nation, I did a little research, and found these quotes on religion from Thomas Jefferson, who I believe was a Diest. One of the quotes dispels the notion that Christianity is a part of common law. Enjoy.

On his tolerance for other religions, Thomas Jefferson to Miles King, September 26, 1814:

“....our particular principles of religion are a subject of accountability to our god alone. I enquire after no man's and trouble none with mine; nor is it given to us in this life to know whether yours or mine, our friend's or our foe's, are exactly the right.”

On Christianity as related to the Common Law, The Works of Thomas Jefferson in Twelve Volumes, 1904, Vol. 1, Whether Christianity is Part of the Common Law, p. 459:

“Christianity neither is, nor ever was, a part of the common law.”

Again, on Christianity, this time on its lack of tolerance for other religions.  Notes on Religion (October, 1776). Published in The Works of Thomas Jefferson in Twelve Volumes, Federal Edition, Paul Leicester Ford, ed., New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1904, Vol. 2, pp. 267:

“Why have Christians been distinguished above all people who have ever lived, for persecutions? Is it because it is the genius of their religion? No, its genius is the reverse. It is the refusing toleration to those of a different opinion which has produced all the bustles and wars on account of religion. It was the misfortune of mankind that during the darker centuries the Christian priests following their ambition and avarice combining with the magistrate to divide the spoils of the people, could establish the notion that schismatics might be ousted of their possessions & destroyed. This notion we have not yet cleared ourselves from.”

Rick Santorum Against Absolute Separation of Church and State

“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.”

- Yesterday, Rick Santorum told George Stephanopoulos on ‘This Week’ that he doesn’t believe in the absolute separation of church and state, unlike of course, President John F. Kennedy, for one.  Think Progress:

John F. Kennedy was just one in a long lineage of U.S. presidents, founding fathers, scholars and religious icons who supported absolute separation between church and state. Even Ronald Reagan, to whom Santorum has compared himself, proudly proclaimed that “we establish no religion in this country, we command no worship, we mandate no belief, nor will we ever. Church and state are, and must remain, separate.”

Romney Attacks Obama on Contraception Issue–But Romneycare Included Similar Coverage of Contraception

Continuing the contraception brouhaha at the Mesa debate last night, Mitt Romney, attacked President Obama on that issue:

“I don't think we've seen in the history of this country the kind of attack on religious conscience, religious freedom, religious tolerance that we've seen under Barack Obama.”

Steve Benen responded this morning:

Think about that one for a moment. The Obama administration is including contraception coverage as part of preventive health care for Americans -- a decision a clear majority of the country heartily supports. The administration is exempting churches and other houses of worship, and has crafted a compromise so that religiously-affiliated employers will not have to pay for contraception coverage directly.

This is the biggest "attack" on religious freedom in the history of the United States? How is it, exactly, that a sane person could believe this?

Or more to the point, how is it that a Mormon, whose church faced actual attacks and discrimination, could see contraception access as a more serious assault on "religious tolerance"?

Of note, RomneyCare in Massachusetts vastly expanded contraception access, a fact which Romney defended last night. His characterization of the RomneyCare contraception coverage could apply just as easily to that provided by the Affordable Care Act which he had the gall to attack. Think Progress:

Under Romneycare, the state’s Commonwealth Care — which offers subsidized, low or no-cost insurance program for low-income residents without access to employer-sponsored health insurance — provides primary and preventive care that includes “family planning services” and prescription contraceptives. Massachusetts employers that are not “a church or qualified church-controlled organization” must also cover hormone replacement therapy and all FDA-approved contraceptive methods.

In 2005, Romney also “signed a bill that could expand the number of people who get family-planning services, including the morning-after pill.” Romney even pressured the state Department of Health and Human Services to issue regulations that required Catholic hospitals to issue the morning after pill to rape victims, despite initially vetoing the bill and claiming that the pill constituted an “abortifacient.” “My personal view in my heart of hearts is that people who are subject to rape should have the option of having emergency contraceptives or emergency contraceptive information,” he told the Boston Herald at the time.

Of one thing I have no doubt whatsoever. Mr. Romney is a most egregious liar.

Morning Quote: Rick Santorum

“Satan has his sights on the United States of America! ”

“Satan is attacking the great institutions of America, using those great vices of pride, vanity, and sensuality as the root to attack all of the strong plants that has so deeply rooted in the American tradition.”

- Rick Santorum in 2008 talking about how Satan is attacking America. Seriously.

Adding........a padded cell would really make a much more effective cage than the White House.

Via Bob Cesca

Morning Quote: Rick Santorum

“ We all know that this country was founded on a Judeo-Christian ethic but the Judeo-Christian ethic was a Protestant Judeo-Christan ethic, sure the Catholics had some influence, but this was a Protestant country and the Protestant ethic, mainstream, mainline Protestantism, and of course we look at the shape of mainline Protestantism in this country and it is a shambles, it s gone from the world of Christianity as I see it. ”

- Rick Santorum bashing Protestants in 2008.

Source: ‘Up With Chris Hayes’

Santorum Attacks President Obama’s Faith

Ya know, there is always a lot of mud slinging in politics, but modern Republicans have gone way off the edge with the stuff they’re slinging since the black man took office.

Case in point, here’s the whiny little evangelical nightmare, Rick Santorum, questioning Pres. Obama’s faith as if we’re supposed to believe that Santorum’s repugnant remarks are anything more than yet another dogwhistle, words which might make us think that the black man is simply different from “us” [white folks].

Think Progress:

The “president’s agenda” is “not about you,” he said. “It’s not about you. It’s not about your quality of life. It’s not about your job. It’s about some phony ideal, some phony theology,” Santorum said to applause from the crowd. “Oh, not a theology based on the Bible, a different theology, but no less a theology.” [...]

Although Santorum criticizes the president daily on the campaign trail, this is the first time he has used this rhetoric or said the president has a “different theology.”

In a statement, Santorum’s campaign said the candidate was not actually talking about Obama’s religion but rather his belief in secularism, adding, “The President says he’s a Christian and Rick believes that and has even said so publicly many times.”

Santorum appears to be on a mission to be a one-man Council of Trent, the 16th Century Catholic ecumenical council that defined Protestants as heretics. In a 2008 speech rediscovered this week, Santorum said Mainline Protestants — about 45 million Presbyterians, Lutherans, Congregationalists, Episcopalians, Methodists and others — are “gone from the world of Christianity as I see it.”

As conservative Presbyterian blogger John Schroeder wrote, Santorum’s “truly intolerant comments concerning Obama pretty well disqualify him from holding office. It is simply not the president’s job to be judging whose theology is correct and whose is not.”

John Schroeder is right. Rick Santorum is unqualified to be president. Not just for the reason cited by Schroeder, but for others as well. In fact, Santorum shouldn’t even be wasting our frickin’ time and taxpayer money by running.

Morning Quote: Rick Santorum

“It’s [contraception] not okay because it’s a license to do things in the sexual realm that is counter to how things are supposed to be. They’re supposed to be within marriage, they are supposed to be for purposes that are, yes, conjugal, but also [inaudible], but also procreative.”

- The GOP’s uber-religious presidential wannabe, Rick Santorum, on who should and should not be able to access contraception, which he views as only for those who are married.

Moronic Quote of the Day: Rick Santorum

Santorum warns that Obama will lead us to execution of the religious via decapitation:

Rick Santorum continued to rail against President Obama’s so-called war against religion during a town hall in Plano, Texas Wednesday night. The former Pennsylvania senator — who has spent the last several days criticizing the government’s requirement that insurers provide contraception coverage and the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeal’s decision striking down Proposition 8 — accused the administration of “crushing” religion and setting the United States on the path towards executing religious people by decapitation:

SANTORUM: “They are taking faith and crushing it. Why? Why? When you marginalize faith in America, when you remove the pillar of God-given rights, then what’s left is the French Revolution. What’s left is the government that gives you right, what’s left are no unalienable rights, what’s left is a government that will tell you who you are, what you’ll do and when you’ll do it. What’s left in France became the guillotine. Ladies and gentlemen, we’re a long way from that, but if we do and follow the path of President Obama and his overt hostility to faith in America, then we are headed down that road.”

And, according to the latest polling, this guy is the new favored leader of the Republicans. Seriously.

Quote of the Day: President Obama

“I actually think that is going to make economic sense, but for me as a Christian, it also coincides with Jesus's teaching that ‘ for unto whom much is given, much shall be required ’.”

- President Obama promotes economic justice while speaking to leaders at the National Prayer Breakfast this morning, explaining the Christian version of  ‘why we need to stop allowing rich people to skate on paying their fair share of taxes’.

Morning Quote: Former Sen. John Danforth

“I've been watching some of these Republican debates and they're just terrible. Terrible. It's embarrassing for me as a Republican to watch this stuff.

What have been the big applause lines in these debates? Well, a statement that the governor of Texas is responsible for killing 234 people on death row. Or that we favor torture. Or that we’re creating a fence on the Mexican border that electrocutes people when they try to cross it. Or when people show up at the emergency room at hospitals and they’re not insured don’t treat them. And that, I mean these are the big applause lines, people just hoop and holler when they hear all that. [...]

It doesn’t have anything to do with the republican party that I was a part of. This is just totally different. And all of these people who are saying this, y’know, and claiming that, y’know, they’re for all this stuff, they also sort of ostentatiously say, “Oh, we’re very religious people. We really, we’re just very pious, Christian people.” They were for torture, and electrocution of the people on along the border and all of that. That doesn’t have anything to do with, is contrary to the Christianity that I understand.”

- Former Sen. John Danforth (R-MO) on the GOP primary debates and the seeming religious hypocrisy of modern Republicans.

Morning Quote: Mrs. Rick Perry

“He truly felt like he was called to do this. We still feel called to do this. We are being brutalized by our opponents and by our party. So much of that is I think they look at him because of his faith. He is the only true conservative. Well, there are some other conservatives, and they are there for good reasons. And they may feel like God called them too. But I truly feel that we are here for that purpose.”

~ Anita Perry tells us that her husband, presidential candidate Gov. Rick Perry (R-TX), was “called by God” to run for the presidency.

Thomas Jefferson – Rational Deist

For all those right wingers who hate it when we [anyone, Liberals especially] bring this stuff up. Simon Schama, on Newsweek:

He may have written the Declaration of Independence, but were he around today Thomas Jefferson wouldn’t have a prayer of winning the Republican nomination, much less the presidency. It wouldn’t be his liaison with the teenage daughter of one of his slaves nor the love children she bore him that would be the stumbling block. Nor would it be Jefferson’s suspicious possession of an English translation of the Quran that might doom him to fail the Newt Gingrich loyalty test. No, it would be the Jesus problem that would do him in. For Thomas Jefferson denied that Jesus was the son of God. Worse, he refused to believe that Jesus ever made any claim that he was. While he was at it, Jefferson also rejected as self-evidently absurd the Trinity, the Virgin Birth, and the Resurrection.

Jefferson was not, as his enemies in the election of 1800 claimed, an atheist. He believed in the Creator whom he invoked in the Declaration of Independence and whom he thought had brought the natural universe into being. By his own lights he thought himself a true Christian, an admirer of the moral teachings of the Nazarene. It had been, he argued, generations of the clergy who had perverted the simple humanity of Jesus the reformer, turned him into a messiah, and invented the myth that he had died to redeem mankind’s sins.

All of which would surely mean that, notwithstanding his passion for minimal government, the Sage of Monticello would have no chance at all beside True Believers like Michele Bachmann. But Jefferson’s rationalist deism is not the idle makeover of liberal wishful thinking. It is incontrovertible historical fact, as is his absolute determination never to admit religion into any institutions of the public realm.

Scientist Accuses Michigan GOP Legislators of Harassing Stem Cell Researchers

One of the nation’s foremost experts in embryonic stem  cell research, and the director of the Center for Stem Cell Biology at the University of Michigan, Sean J. Morrison, has leveled an accusation of harassment at the Michigan legislature and faith-based groups.

Morrison is leaving Michigan to head up a new pediatric research initiative at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical School in Dallas, and took the opportunity to slam both faith-based groups and Michigan’s GOP legislators:

“There are a small number of faith-based special interest groups that are attacking relentlessly. Relentlessly looking for ways to block these forms of medical research most people in the country feel should be supported,” he said. “They’re well-enough organized and sophisticated and have deep-enough pockets. What that means is we are constantly under attack.”

Morrison was a vocal leader in the successful effort to pass Proposition 2, the 2008 amendment to the state Constitution that allows embryonic stem cell research in Michigan. Leading up to the vote, he testified before lawmakers on the potential of the research and gave media interview after media interview explaining the science.

Since 2008, lawmakers and conservative-leaning groups have attempted to undermine the change, he said in an interview Wednesday.

The latest attempt is a set of new reporting requirements for embryonic stem cell research, which was tacked onto the higher education budget bill.

“It’s a way of making it more difficult for the University of Michigan,” he said. “And it’s unfortunate, because U-M is a spectacular place, and it’s a terrific environment in which to do research, but there are lots of ways in which the Legislature holds this place back.”

Perhaps the GOP should reactivate the use of the scarlet letter, only instead of an “A” for adultery, they can make it an “S” for scientist and tattoo the foreheads of scientists they disagree with. I feel fairly certain that We’d have damn near every scientist in the country wearing that letter on his/her forehead.

Morning Quote: H.L. Mencken

Theology is the effort to explain the unknowable in terms of the not worth knowing.

Morning Quote: Clarence Thomas

In a 2009 speech to students at an event celebrating the Bill of Rights, Justice Clarence Thomas on his memories of his childhood schoolroom:

Or how can you not reminisce about a childhood where you began each day with the Pledge of Allegiance as little kids lined up in the schoolyard and then marched in two by two with a flag and a crucifix in each classroom?

Yeah, I can see where he might miss the days when religion played an even larger role in public schools. The idea that we are guaranteed freedom of religion, and that religious symbols and celebrations should not be a part of public institutions, apparently doesn’t sit well with him, and yet, this is a Supreme Court Justice. Oh, the irony.

Morning Quote: Bill Maher

Bill Maher to the Teabaggers re the Founding Fathers

Now I want you Teabaggers out there to understand one thing. While you idolize the Founding Fathers, and dress up like them and smell like them, I think it's pretty clear that the Founding Fathers would have hated your guts. And what's more, you would have hated them. They were everything you despise. They studied science, read Plato, hung out in Paris, and thought the Bible was mostly bullshit.

Watch:

Morning Quote: Thomas Jefferson on Religion in Government

The Right Wing Religious Nutjobs enjoy quoting Jefferson’s memorial, for engraved upon it is a quote from Thomas Jefferson, one which they call “proof” that this country was founded upon religion.

I have sworn upon the altar of God, eternal hostility against every form of tyranny over the mind of man.

Unfortunately for the “preachers” as Jefferson and Adams liked to call those who attempted to install religion in to the fabric of our government, the quote lacks context. For that context, we turn to a time two months prior to the election of 1800 [when Jefferson became president], when then Vice President Jefferson wrote to his great friend, Dr. Benjamin Rush, a man “who started out as an orthodox Christian and ended up, later in his life, a Deist and Unitarian.”  Here then, is the quote [blue type] inscribed on the Jefferson Memorial, in context.

I promised you a letter on Christianity, which I have not forgotten. I do not know that it would reconcile the genus irritabile vatum [the angry poets] who are all in arms against me. Their hostility is on too interesting ground to be softened.

The delusion ...on the [First Amendment] clause of the Constitution, which, while it secured the freedom of the press, covered also the freedom of religion, had given to the clergy a very favorite hope of obtaining an establishment of a particular form of Christianity through the United States; and as every sect believes its own form the true one, every one perhaps hoped for his own, but especially the Episcopalians and Congregationalists.

The returning good sense of our country threatens abortion to their hopes, and they [the preachers] believe that any portion of power confided to me, will be exerted in opposition to their schemes. And they believe rightly: for I have sworn upon the altar of God, eternal hostility against every form of tyranny over the mind of man. But this is all they have to fear from me: and enough too in their opinion.

Morning Quote

In a letter to François Adriaan van der Kemp, a Dutch minister, in 1809, John Adams wrote of his admiration for the tenets of the Jewish religion.

I will insist that the Hebrews have done more to civilize men than any other nation. If I were an atheist, and believed in blind eternal fate, I should still believe that fate had ordained the Jews to be the most essential instrument for civilizing the nations. If I were an atheist of the other sect, who believe or pretend to believe that all is ordered by chance, I should believe that chance had ordered the Jews to preserve and propagate to all mankind the doctrine of a supreme, intelligent, wise, almighty sovereign of the universe, which I believe to be the great essential principle of all morality, and consequently of all civilization.

Morning Quote

During a campaign (during the primary presidential campaign) stop in Warren, Michigan, in 2008, Mike Huckabee made it clear that he believes that we need two new amendments to the Constitution. One, a human life amendment, and the other an amendment which would define marriage as constitutional between a man and a woman only.

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 trying 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.

8 False Tea Party-Republican Memes to Talk About Before You Go to the Polls

1. The Tea Party is a grass roots movement.

REALITY: The Tea Party is a rebranding effort by the Republican Party, led by the billionaire Koch Brothers and their organization, Americans for Prosperity. Read this report, and don't forget to look at this fabulous graphic, which is worth at least 10,000 words all by itself. The corporate takeover of our government is in process.

2. The stimulus was a failure.

REALITY: Not only was it not a failure, but a huge number of Republicans not only had their hands out to grab the money while the "failure" word came flying out of their mouths at regular intervals, 114 of them took credit for the same stimulus that they voted against. Additionally, the stimulus cost $787 billion, not $1.2 trillion, and created 3.3 million new jobs, and prevented an even deeper recession.

3. The President is a Muslim Kenyan Socialist who has never produced his birth certificate.

REALITY: The President is an American Christian centrist who produced his birth certificate for public display when this ridiculous meme first began during the 2008 election. Socialism requires a more left wing point of view, and this president is not even center left, much less far left.

4. Nowhere in the constitution does it state that there must be a separation between church and state.

REALITY: It is important to understand that this meme was not born out of ignorance, but out of a desire to intertwine religion and government, and thus the Far Right has re-interpreted the first two clauses in the First Amendment to be more to their liking. Constitutional scholars agree that these clauses denote the doctrine of the separation of church and state. Because our SCOTUS is Far Right, it is a dangerous meme.

5. The health care reform bill enacted by Democrats hurt Medicare and recipients of Medicare.

REALITY: Not only did it not harm the Medicare program, it actually strengthened it.

6. There is no difference between union funding of election ads and funding by secretive Super PACs.

REALITY: The difference between them is enormous. Union funding comes from the workers, the people who belong to the unions, and thus we know who is funding these ads. Secretive Super PACs, on the other hand, are funded by anyone, including in some cases foreign interests or multi-national companies, and no disclosure is required. There is also NO limit on donor contributions. Individuals funding union pacs are limited to specific, and low, dollar amounts, and there is disclosure.

These last two are from Dave Johnson, in his words.

7. Social Security is a Ponzi scheme, and is "going broke".

REALITY: Social Security has run a surplus since it began, has a trust fund in the trillions, is completely sound for at least 25 more years and cannot legally borrow so cannot contribute to the deficit (compare that to the military budget!) Life expectancy is only longer because fewer babies die; people who reach 65 live about the same number of years as they used to.

8. President Obama tripled the deficit.
REALITY: Bush's last budget had a $1.416 trillion deficit. Obama's first budget reduced that to $1.29 trillion.

Please re-blog this post, email it, and link to it. This stuff matters.

Links to Obama Administration / Democratic Party Accomplishments:

~ Rachel Maddow recounts what the Democrats accomplished in the past two years, and in the face of unrelenting opposition from the Republican Party. Maddow says that the Democrats, who controlled both Housees and the Presidency, were about policy, not politics.

~ Crowd-sourced on Twitter, a well sourced listing of the achievements of the Obama administration.

~ WTF has Obama done so far?.com

And finally, go VOTE!

Morning Quote

Sharron Angle denies the existence of the doctrine of the separation of church and state in an interview with John Ralston:

RALSTON: The separation of church and state arises out of the Constitution.

ANGLE: No, it doesn't, John.

RALSTON: Oh it doesn't? Oh, the Founding Fathers didn't believe in the separation of church and state, the Establishment Clause, the First Amendment?

ANGLE: Actually, Thomas Jefferson has been misquoted, like I've been misquoted out of context. Thomas Jefferson was actually addressing a church and telling them through his address that there had been a wall of separation put up between the church and the state precisely to protect the church

RALSTON: So there should be no separation.

ANGLE: To protect the church from being taken over by a state religion. And that's what they meant by that.

Headline of the Year: “O’Donnell: No Witchcraft Since High School”

Oh. My. God.

This is what our country has now come to. Christine O’Donnell, a candidate for the U.S. Senate discussing her involvement in “witchcraft”.

Adding…. perhaps she and Palin can compare notes.

ht Bob Cesca

Video Flashback: Witch Hunter Prays Over Sarah Palin in Her Wasilla Church

Remember this? The vid that was originally posted on the website of Palin's church in Wasilla, depicts Palin as she is prayed over by Kenyan witch hunter, Thomas Muthee, a man who has made a vile career out of persecuting “witches” in Africa.

Muthee began his life in ministry in Africa by hunting down a local woman named Mama Jane after proclaiming her a witch. Six months of fervent prayer and research identified the source of the witchcraft as a local woman called Mama Jane, who ran a “divination” centre called the Emmanuel Clinic in Kiambu, Kenya. Her alleged involvement in fortune-telling and the fact that she lived near the site of a number of fatal car accidents led Pastor Muthee to publicly declare her a witch responsible for the town’s ills, and order her to offer up her soul for salvation or leave Kiambu. After Pastor Muthee declared Mama Jane a witch, the townspeople became suspicious and began to turn on her, demanding that she be stoned. [……]

Shades of Salem.

Adding….wondering if Palin might require protection from her protégée's witchery.....

Fox and Friends Shows Map of Body Parts at Ground Zero

A new lead-in is required for Fox and Friends -- "As tasteless as they are ignorant".

Stay classy, Republicans.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

It must be pointed out, over and over again, that it is utterly disingenuous of Fox Network to even speak about the community center situation since Fox Network, as part of News Corp, is owned by one of the investors in the center, The Kingdom Foundation, aka Saudi Prince Alwaleed. Yes, the second largest shareholder of News Corp is also an investor in the proposed community center that Fox Network has spent so much time denigrating.

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart	Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c
The Parent Company Trap
www.thedailyshow.com

Damn it, but the clearly evident hypocrisy is gauling.

ht Bob Cesca

UPDATE: The New York Post, also owned by Murdoch and Prince Alwaleed, is also showing the map of remains.

Islamic Radicals React to US Anti-Muslim Rhetoric

Nice job, Republicans/Christians, itching for a holy war.

From the Wall St. Journal:

Islamic radicals are seizing on protests against a planned Islamic community center near Manhattan's Ground Zero and anti-Muslim rhetoric elsewhere as a propaganda opportunity and are stepping up anti-U.S. chatter and threats on their websites.

One jihadist site vowed to conduct suicide bombings in Florida to avenge a threatened Koran burning, while others predicted an increase in terrorist recruits as a result of such actions.

Via Bob Cesca

Former Bush Solicitor General & 9/11 Widower Supports Obama on Ground Zero Mosque

Via Huffington Post

Ted Olson, former George W. Bush solicitor general, attorney behind the case against California's gay marriage ban, and husband of a woman who died aboard the plane that crashed into the Pentagon on 9/11, said Wednesday that President Obama was right about his analysis of the "Ground Zero Mosque" as a constitutional right protected by the First Amendment.

Well it may not make me hap-- popular with some people, but I think, probably, the president was right about this. I do believe that people of all religions have a right to build edifices, or structures, or places of religious worship or study where the community allows them to do it under zoning laws and that sort of thing, and that we don't want to turn an act of hate against us by extremists into an act of intolerance for people of religious faith. And I don't think it should be a political issue. It shouldn't be a Republican or Democratic issue, either. I believe Gov. Christie from New Jersey said it well, that this should not be in that political, partisan marketplace.

The National GOP Trust PAC Releases the Most Despicable Money-Grubbing Political Ad Ever

Via Bob Cesca, this piece of trash ad contains barely a grain of truth in it, and that grain is confined to the fact that there actually is a "Ground Zero" Everything else is a lie or a distortion, put out by the National GOP Trust PAC . Those who created and released this ad are the most despicable kind of human beings on the planet, and that is not hyberbole. Using images of someone's loved one falling to his death on 9/11 for political purposes is nothing less than craven.

Please re-post this video, let's send it viral.

And then, vote the damn Republicans down in November. This country can not take any more of these fascist pigs.

Adding... for the truth about how Americans really like their hallowed ground, check out Cesca's article on HuffPost.

This bears repeating: unlike Park 51, which is blocks away, there's going to be a 55,000 square foot mall under the same ground where people fell to their deaths on that terrible day. Ground that's mixed with the remains of the dead. A mall.

Sharron Angle against all choice for women

Sharron Angle, the Republican candidate for the Senate in Nevada, as well as a Tea Party favorite, is waaaay out there on many issues. Her viewpoint on a woman's right to choose is radical. In a radio interview from January 2010, Angle told Bill Manders, the interviewer, that she doesn't even support abortion in cases of rape or incest, rather that "God has a plan.".

MANDERS: I, too, am pro-life but I'm also pro-choice, do you understand what I mean when I say that.

ANGLE: I'm pro responsible choice. There is choice to abstain choice to do contraception. There are all kind of good choices.

MANDERS: Is there any reason at all for an abortion?

ANGLE: Not in my book.

MANDERS: So, in other words, rape and incest would not be something?

ANGLE: You know, I'm a Christian and I believe that God has a plan and a purpose for each one of our lives and that he can intercede in all kinds of situations and we need to have a little faith in many things.

Separation of church and state not withstanding, apparently Sharron Angle would like to impose her religious views on us if she is elected to govern.

Read more, and/or listen to the audio. 

Tell Sharron Angle how you feel on Twitter.