Welcome to the United States of Scam-erica. Or Griftopia, as Matt Taibbi calls it in his book on the Wall Street meltdown. “There are really two Americas,” Taibbi writes. For the grifter class, government is “a tool for making money,” while “in everybody-else land, the government is something to be avoided.”
Not [...]
No man can serve two masters: for either he will hate the one, and love the other; or else he will hold to the one, and despise the other. Ye cannot serve God and mammon. – Matthew 6:24
President Richard Nixon once observed, “Flexibility is the first principle of politics.” But that brings [...]
Primary voters just gave former Speaker Newt Gingrich the win in the Republican presidential primary in South Carolina, “America’s most conservative state.” Reddest of the red. Buckle of the Bible Belt. CNN welcomed viewers to the Charleston debate this week with “Welcome to the South,” a place “where values matter.”
More [...]
In recent weeks, we have seen an odd flurry of articles and conservative op-ed columns attacking a number of authors and journalists who write about the Christian Right. Religion writer Mark I. Pinsky has issued the latest scurrilous screed, this time in USA Today. It is remarkable that so much prime [...]
As the presidential campaign season got underway four years ago, a Hollywood documentary about abortion hit the theaters. Lake of Fire was critically acclaimed but was a lot less than a box office smash. I watched it again recently, and am glad I did. The film is an exceptionally thoughtful — and volatile [...]
I am coming late to the reporting and analysis of the Norway bombing, but allow me to connect current events with some of the themes I have been writing about in recent years.
The Norway bombing in all of its dimensions — the initial false assumption and reporting that it was Islamic terrorism; media [...]
To read most of the media most of the time — mainstream, alternative, or even the political blogosphere, it is hard to find much mention of Roy Moore. This is somewhat odd, since the announcement of his exploratory committee made national news.
Moore, the disgraced former Chief Judge [...]
Sarah Posner reports at Religion Dispatches about how professors in class at the law school founded by the late Jerry Falwell pressured students to choose “God’s Law” over “Man’s” in an exam question about a notorious kidnapping case. The two professors who taught the class at Liberty University are personally involved in the [...]
A few days ago, Phoenix Suns president Rick Welts revealed that he is gay. And the whole sporting world exploded yawned.
Okay, that’s not precisely true. There has been a bit of comment and analysis. But so far, no controversy. No homophobic ranting, no athletes stepping up to say that Jesus [...]
One of the consequences of the creeping Religious Rightism in the Democratic Party has been the steady erosion of reproductive rights and access to reproductive health care for women, especially abortion care.
Two items in the news underscore the situation. A special issue of Conscience magazine questions whether the [...]
While many journalists, scholars and activists have done serious writing about the theocratic Christian Reconstructionist movement and its influence on the development of the Religious Right — others have pooh-poohed it. In a recent column in The New York Times Mark Oppenheimer placed one foot firmly in the pooh-pooh camp.
Oppenheimer’s piece [...]
Devin Burghart of the Institute for Research and Education on Human Rights recently reported that a recent regional Tea Party Patriots conference held in Idaho was a far-right stew of
“…racist “birther” attacks on President Obama, discussions of the conspiracy behind the problem facing America (complete with anti-Semitic illustration), Christian nationalism, anti-environmentalism, [...]
I was glad to read recently that popular moderate evangelical Tony Campolo recognizes what many others do not: That for better or worse, the Religious Right is here to stay for a very long time. (And as Bill Berkowitz has pointed out, he should know.) Then I read a subsequent Campolo [...]
Former Senator Rick Santorum (R-PA) who is considering running for president, recently visited Boston, a major hub of Catholic politics and the biggest media market in New England. While minor appearances by non-candidates don’t always make the news, Santorum’s remarks to a small group of Church partisans made The Boston Globe because he [...]
Wisconsin Republican State Senator Randy Hopper is a top target of the recall campaign being waged by Democrats and unions over Republican efforts to eliminate collective bargaining rights for public employees. The backlash has already resulted in the surfacing of details of how his family values Republicanism may not be all that he would like [...]
The progressive, Somerville, MA-based think tank Political Research Associates has a new study exposing how anti-Muslim fanatics have been used as anti-terrorism training experts by American law enforcement agencies at all levels. The report was published as the House Homeland Security Committee was ramping-up its controversial hearings on the alleged threat of homegrown [...]
So Frank Rich has departed the Grey Lady for smaller pastures, leaving one wondering who is to replace him on the hallowed—and increasingly right-leaning—op-ed pages of the Times. Hm…
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