Download | Play    Download | Play (h/t Heather)

My pal, Rachel Maddow gives us a good overall look at this story as Bob Jones U. finally apologized for being total racists.

Bob Jones University has apologized for racist policies including a one-time ban on interracial dating that wasn't lifted until nine years ago and its unwillingness to admit black students until 1971.

"We failed to accurately represent the Lord and to fulfill the commandment to love others as ourselves. For these failures we are profoundly sorry. Though no known antagonism toward minorities or expressions of racism on a personal level have ever been tolerated on our campus, we allowed institutional policies to remain in place that were racially hurtful," the statement said.

The interracial dating ban was lifted in March 2000, not long after the policy became an issue in the Republican presidential primary that year. Then-candidate George W. Bush was criticized when he spoke at the school during one of his first campaign stops in the state after losing in New Hampshire.

The leader of the South Carolina NAACP said the civil rights group welcomed the statement.

"It's unfortunate it took them this long — particularly a religious, faith-based institution — to realize that we all are human beings and the rights of all people should be respected and honored," said Lonnie Randolph, president of the state chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People.

Download | Play    Download | Play

Tony Perkins of the Family Research Council was out repeating the nonsensical yet much-repeated "America is a center-right country" meme for CNN's Lou Dobbs program Wednesday, and he added something of a new twist:

I think there is a strategy that's going to be going forward for the conservative movement. I think many in the conservative movement, if you will, believe that the Republican Party took over the conservative movement and kind of ran it off the road. And, uh, conservatives are ready to take back control of the conservative movement, and if the Republican Party wants to be a governing party, as it has been in the past, then it's going to have to return to those conservative principles.

I think most people -- Republicans like Kathleen Parker included -- see it the other way around: the Republican Party was taken over by the conservative movement. One upon a time, the GOP actually was home to genuine moderates like Lowell Weicker and John Chafee; but ever since Ronald Reagan's ascension in the late 1970s, it gradually become a wholly owned subsidiary of the conservative movement.

Certainly, nearly every step taken by George W. Bush during his tenure had the movement's ardent support -- until, that is, it became self-evident to everyone but the 20-percenter kool-aid drinkers that his presidency was an unmitigated disaster for the nation. Now they want to blame that disaster on everyone but the misbegotten philosophy that caused it.

As Digby put it some time ago:

George W. Bush will not achieve a place in the Republican pantheon. Conservatism cannot fail, it can only be failed. (And a conservative can only fail because he is too liberal.)

Now, part of what makes movement conservatives the lovable wingnuts they are is that they are nothing if not spectacularly un-self-aware. They're like people who wear their underwear on their heads and then are puzzled when everyone points and laughs.

So Tony Perkins goes on, while repeating the right's favorite meme, and even admits that Republican governance has been a fiasco:

Look, America is a center-right nation. Barack Obama and the policies he reflects are not reflective of the nation. I think he offered, you know, what he called change, and Americans were ready for change. You know, Republicans have not governed well, and America was looking for a new path, and Barack Obama offered that. Now, his success is going to depend on whether or not he can govern as a moderate, as he campaigned, or whether he is going to be a liberal, as his record would indicate.

Continue reading »

Do you see a pattern here? More and more of the lunatic fringe are losing it. Here's the latest one.
 

A Fairfield woman whose car was adorned with celebratory signs for President-elect Barack Obama is furious that a priest singled her out during Sunday morning Mass and ordered her to leave.
Elizabeth Caster admits her Toyota Sequoia was parked in a loading zone outside of the Our Lady of Mount Carmel Church in Fairfield, but said it was common practice by parishioners during services and that two other vehicles parked on either side of her vehicle were not addressed.

Caster said the Rev. Sebastian Meyer humiliated her in front of the congregation, saying from the pulpit, "We cannot have a car with Obama signs written on it on these premises. And I don't care who Obama is."
He continued, "I want this car off the premises in 10 minutes or it will be towed. Whoever's vehicle this is, I want it removed. I don't want to see that car anywhere around here," she said.

The Rev. Meyer did not return calls. An attempt to speak to him face to face ended abruptly Wednesday morning when he announced, "No, we're not writing that," and attempted to snatch a reporter's notebook away.

Caster said the priest followed her and her 10-year-old son out of the church and refused to let her park anywhere in the parking lot. She had to come back after the service to pick up her parents, who were visiting from Kenya.

She has since forgiven the pastor, she said, but noted a definite tone in his voice. "It was something to the effect of, I don't care who Obama is, he won, get over it," she said. "It seems there was some anger and animosity in his tone. You could feel the Holy Spirit sucked out of the church."

I'm going to keep a list.

I grew up Catholic and did go to church quite often some years ago and I never heard any politics mentioned from the pulpit. This is beyond disgraceful, but in today's times it happens every day among the extreme religious right.

C&Ler Jay emailed me the info:

Dedication of the Lateran Basilica in Rome 9 November 2008

Dear Friends in Christ,

We the People have spoken, and the 44th President of the United States will be Barack Hussein Obama. This election ends a political process that started two years ago and which has revealed deep and bitter divisions within the United States and also within the Catholic Church in the United States.

Between these two visions of the use of lethal violence against the unborn there can be no negotiation or conciliation, and now our nation has chosen for its chief executive the most radical pro-abortion politician ever to serve in the United States Senate or to run for president. We must also take note of the fact that this election was effectively decided by the votes of self-described (but not practicing) Catholics, the majority of whom cast their ballots for President-elect Obama...

1. Voting for a pro-abortion politician when a plausible pro-life alternative exits constitutes material cooperation with intrinsic evil, and those Catholics who do so place themselves outside of the full communion of Christ’s Church and under the judgment of divine law. Persons in this condition should not receive Holy Communion until and unless they are reconciled to God in the Sacrament of Penance, lest they eat and drink their own condemnation.

read on

Meg Kinnard writes:

Conservative Catholics criticized Democratic presidential nominee John Kerry in 2004 for supporting abortion rights, with a few Catholic bishops saying Kerry should refrain from receiving Holy Communion because his views were contrary to church teachings.

Sister Mary Ann Walsh, spokeswoman for the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, said she had not heard of other churches taking this position in reaction to Obama's win. A Boston-based group that supports Catholic Democrats questioned the move, saying it was too extreme.

"Father Newman is off base," said Steve Krueger, national director of Catholic Democrats. "He is acting beyond the authority of a parish priest to say what he did. ... Unfortunately, he is doing so in a manner that will be of great cost to those parishioners who did vote for Sens. Obama and Biden. There will be a spiritual cost to them for his words."

If Obama is successful (and I think he will be), the religious zealots' influence will wane across the country. I predict that this will lead to actual violent acts of aggression in America influenced by the Father Newmans of the Religious Right, and all in the name of the Lord. It's coming. Eric Rudolph, the Atlanta Olympics bomber, is just one of them, but his religious views were never highlighted by the MSM as they were in the blogoshere. (Rudolph pleads guilty in series of bombings. In statement, bomber says ‘abortion on demand’ reason for attacks)

Here's a post I wrote on Apr 13, 2005:

Why isn't the 24/7 cable News playing up the Rudolph conviction?

This seems like the story cable news would be tripping all over each other to cover round the clock. It has everything any producer could want. A mad bomber right out of a Hollywood script that attacked the Olympics. He killed two people and injured 120! That's like almost three football teams.

White Supremacist ties and anti-semitic values. 250 pounds of dynamite just waiting for the fuse to be lit. There should be hundreds of protestors camped outside the Atlanta courtroom lashing out at judges and prosecutors for not seeking the death penalty. James Dobson should be on FOX News declaring that "the whole legal system is out of control and are derailing our judicial system. We have the death penalty for a good reason. How could any civil minded judge go along with this plea bargain anyway?" I can see signs held up amid the gaggle of the press that reads: "God said an eye for an eye!" Oh wait, sorry....he's an anti-abortionist. He believes in the culture of life. He hates gays too. Sorry, my mistake.

Two days after Obama and the Democratic Party won a ringing 7 million refusal of rightwing fearmongering and hate, the extreme right are unrepentant and none the wiser. Smintheus at Unbossed writes:

This evening James Dobson's Focus on the Family Action sent out a fundraising email to members that likened the victories of Barack Obama and congressional Democrats in Tuesday's election to the Nazi bombing of England during World War II. The author of this vile letter is Tom Minnery, Senior Vice President of Focus on the Family Action. It was nearly inevitable that anger over losing the 2008 election would soon provoke right-wing extremists to violate Godwin's Law. Obama's victory in Colorado may have been particularly galling for the Colorado Springs based Focus on the Family, which has been heavily involved in the political campaign this year advocating for conservative issues. James Dobson personally endorsed the McCain-Palin ticket this fall.

Focus on the Family has not so far posted this hateful fundraising letter on the web. Here is the opening section of the letter:

Dear Friend,

The spirit of Winston Churchill was alive and well on Tuesday night at Focus on the Family Action headquarters.

You may recall that in the most desperate days of World War II – when Great Britain was being pounded daily by Hitler’s Luftwaffe – that Winston Churchill called on his countrymen not to despair from danger but to rise to the challenge.

It goes on in exactly the same vein, saying that:

Our nation has never faced the kind of anti-family, pro-abortion assault that we’re likely to see in the coming weeks and months. We don’t have to guess what the Left will do now that they control Congress and the White House; they’ve told us.

What are FoF so upset about? Freedom of choice, freedom of marriage and legislation to combat discrimination against gays in the workplace. The last, according to FoF, will be an assault on FoF members' religious freedom. Nice of them to state so clearly that theirs is a path of bigotry.

Obama has their number.

Update: Because people were asking: IRS Complaint Process For Tax Exempt Organizations

Crossposted from Newshoggers

Recommended reading: "Red Sex, Blue Sex". The New Yorker's Margaret Talbot explores why so many evangelical teen-agers become pregnant, and why there is such a hypocritical acceptance of teen pregnancy within the evangelical community. And yeah, relying on "abstinence only" education is only part of the problem.

Open thread below...

MSNBC:

California voters have passed a constitutional amendment outlawing same-sex marriage, the Associated Press reported Wednesday. NBC News has yet to confirm the passage of this amendment, which would overturn a court ruling that gave gay couples the right to wed just months ago. The passage of Proposition 8 represents a crushing political defeat for gay-rights activists, who had hoped public opinion on the contentious issue had shifted enough to help them defeat the measure.

It also represents a personal loss for the thousands of couples from California and others states who got married in the brief window when they could. Legal experts said courts will have to resolve whether their unions still are valid. California joins Arizona and Florida, where voters also approved amendments banning gay marriage. Gay-rights forces also suffered a loss in Arkansas, where voters approved a measure banning unmarried couples from serving as adoptive or foster parents. Supporters made clear that gays and lesbians were their main target.

This is really, really disappointing. I think that the dishonest ads Prop 8 ran about children and using Barack Obama's face helped them immeasurably at the end, because it was running behind in the polls as late as the weekend. I fully expect that the proposition, like Prop 22 in 2000 will be challenged in court and meet a similar fate that Prop 22 did.

The Face of Proposition 8 from Theremina on Vimeo.

And you thought the crazy people were only at McCain/Palin events. These people are getting scarier by the second.

Digby nails it:

Conservatives are starting to feel very, very freaked out. And they tend to be the type of people who believe violence is the best answer for everything. You do the math. The sheer rage in the voices of the anti-gay marriage people is chilling.

Rishathra has more...

(I'm having trouble viewing some embeds on Firefox lately too.)

Sarah Palin breaks with John McCain, telling CBN's David Brody that she would support a "Federal Marriage Amendment" effectively banning gay marriage:

I am, in my own, state, I have voted along with the vast majority of Alaskans who had the opportunity to vote to amend our Constitution defining marriage as between one man and one woman. I wish on a federal level that that's where we would go because I don't support gay marriage. I'm not going to be out there judging individuals, sitting in a seat of judgment telling what they can and can't do, should and should not do, but I certainly can express my own opinion here and take actions that I believe would be best for traditional marriage and that's casting my votes and speaking up for traditional marriage that, that instrument that it's the foundation of our society is that strong family and that's based on that traditional definition of marriage, so I do support that.

This is how the McCain campaign is using Palin to keep the religious right on board even as he stages a supposedly "moderate" agenda in pursuit of suburban votes. Palin's sending a signal to the Dobson faction that was responsible for her ascension that their agenda is in play.

And Tracy Kerlee is supposed to be a Christian.

Tracy: I can't imagine a President of the United States being named President Obama. I really have a problem with that and I'm not the only one.
Q: Because that means what to you?

Tracy: His background. A mother that was atheist. Huh, that really gets to me. A father that was a Muslim. That should get to everyone.

The term values is so misused. Tracy, and she has every right to feel the way she does, should not be represented as being a values voter in my opinion. I'd call it something else. Being an atheist is a value just as much as an evangelical or what ever religion you practice.
(h/t Wayne. Info from Youtube link)

Download | Play    Download | Play

Bill Maher has new rules for political "soulmates", gay French ambassadors, Amy Winehouse and any American who is considering voting for a candidate who seeks healing from witch doctors.

And finally, new rule: You can’t be President if you practice a violent, Middle Eastern religion and worship a genocidal desert god. Which is why Sarah Palin can’t be President. Now all the churches that Sarah Palin has attended, and she’s been to almost as many churches as she has colleges, have one thing in common: a belief that the Bible is literally true. She’s not “Country First”, she’s “Bible First”. And not just the New Testament. That’s the happy half of the book: the baby in the manger, Jesus doing magic tricks, long romantic walks on the water that turn into fishing trips with the guys and a generally positive message. Jesus, after all, preached love and forgiveness, not shooting wolves from an airplane.

The problem is Gov. Avon Lady, she takes the Old Testament literally too, and in that one, God is an insecure, rage-filled hybrid of Bobby Knight and Suge Knight. He’s been alive forever and He has anger issues. He’s like John McCain if John McCain could fart hail. He’s pro-slavery, pro-polygamy and homophobic and he’ll kill you for masturbating. More people get stoned in the Old Testament than in my Jacuzzi. That’s what I have to tell you guys… If there was a video of Barack Obama standing in front of his congregation being healed by a black witch doctor, this election would be over.

But there is that video of Sarah Palin.

By the way, for those of you keep track, Jane congratulates Bill for his "Religulous" kicking "An American Carol"'s tail on opening weekend. Considering that AAC wouldn't preview the film for critics, I think it's safe to say it's about as funny as the 1/2 Hour Comedy Hour.

For pastors to endorse McCain is kind of hilarious because they hate him almost as much as liberals do, but something should be done about this.

Defying a federal law that prohibits U.S. clergy from endorsing political candidates from the pulpit, an evangelical Christian minister told his congregation Sunday that voting for Sen. Barack Obama would be evidence of "severe moral schizophrenia."  Johnson and 32 other pastors across the country set out Sunday to break the rules, hoping to generate a legal battle that will prompt federal courts to throw out a 54-year-old ban on political endorsements by tax-exempt houses of worship.

The ministers contend they have a constitutional right to advise their worshipers how to vote. As Johnson put it during a break between sermons, "The point that the IRS says you can't do it, I'm saying you're wrong."

They want this to be an issue. Just remove their tax free status (preceded by a lengthy, expensive audit) and be done with it for all those that break the law.  

More at Project Fairplay, which specifically targets these abuses by churches and pastors. 

  Talk To Action:

Last week, while the media focused almost obsessively on the DNC's spectacle in Denver, the country's most influential conservatives met quietly at a hotel in downtown Minneapolis to get to know Sarah Palin. The assembled were members of the Council for National Policy, an ultra-secretive cabal that networks wealthy right-wing donors together with top conservative operatives to plan long-term movement strategy.

CNP members have included Tony Perkins, James Dobson, Grover Norquist, Tim LaHaye and Paul Weyrich. At a secret 2000 meeting of the CNP, George W. Bush promised to nominate only pro-life judges; in 2004, then-Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist told the group, "The destiny of the nation is on the shoulders of the conservative movement." This year, thanks to Sarah Palin's selection, the movement may have finally aligned itself behind the campaign of John McCain.

Though Dobson and Perkins reportedly attended the recent CNP meeting in Minneapolis, a full roster of guests would be nearly impossible to require. The CNP deliberately operates below the radar, going to excessive lengths to obscure its activities. According to official CNP policy, "The media should not know when or where we meet or who takes part in our programs before or after a meeting." Thus the CNP's Minneapolis gathering was free of reporters. I only learned of the get-together through an online commentary by one of its attendees, top Dobson/Focus on the Family flack Tom Minnery. (Watch it here)

Minnery described the mood as CNP members watched Palin accept her selection as John McCain's Vice Presidential pick. "I was standing in the back of a ballroom filled with largely Republicans who were hoping against hope that something would put excitement back into this campaign," Minnery said. "And I have to tell you, that speech by Alaska Governor Sarah Palin -- people were on their seats applauding, cheering, yelling... That room in Minneapolis watching on the television screen was electrified. I have not seen anything like it in a long time."

Like I said yesterday, it appears the price John McCain was willing to pay to those he called "agents of intolerance" in 2000 was the choice of his running mate.  How maverick-y.

And now since the "experience" meme has been undermined by his choice, the new narrative is that the McCain/Palin ticket represents "reform", which the media is only too happy to pick up and run with.

But the question must be asked: How is it reform to pander to the Religious Right?

AP:

KNOXVILLE, Tenn. (AP) -- Knoxville's police chief says the man accused of a shooting that killed two people at a Tennessee church targeted the congregation because of its liberal social stance.

Chief Sterling Owen IV said Monday that police found a letter in Jim D. Adkisson's car. Owen said Adkisson was apparently frustrated over being out of work and had a "stated hatred of the liberal movement." The church is known for advocating women's and gay rights and founding an American Civil Liberties Union chapter. Read on...

Adkisson is obviously a very disturbed person, regardless of his political views. We will most likely learn more details in time, but the picture that's developing is one of a typical, uninformed Fox News, Rush Limbaugh, Michael Wiener-Savage fan -- an angry white male who has been brainwashed into thinking that everything wrong in America and around the world is the fault of the evil liberals. As with the church shootings in Colorado last December, the right will find some way to spin this story and turn Adkisson into an anti-Christian liberal whack job and blame it on the liberal media.

In response to the tragic church shootings in Colorado, Family Research Council head Tony Perkins naturally pointed the finger of blame at the "secular media." The senseless massacre of several deeply religious people by one of their own reflected, he claimed, "hostility that is being fomented in our culture from some in the secular media toward Christians." Of course, Perkins has it almost exactly backwards. Whether concerning abortion, gay Americans, immigration or judicial appointments, the line connecting the rhetoric of the Republican Party and the mainstream conservative movement to right-wing terror is a very short one.

John Amato: I wrote this a while ago. Why isn’t the 24/7 cable News playing up the Rudolph conviction?

White Supremacist ties and anti-Semitic values. 250 pounds of dynamite just waiting for the fuse to be lit. There should be hundreds of protesters camped outside the Atlanta courtroom lashing out at judges and prosecutors for not seeking the death penalty. James Dobson should be on FOX News declaring that "the whole legal system is out of control and are derailing our judicial system. We have the death penalty for a good reason. How could any civil minded judge go along with this plea bargain anyway?" I can see signs held up amid the gaggle of the press that reads: "God said an eye for an eye!" Oh wait, sorry....he's an anti-abortionist. He believes in the culture of life. He hates gays too. Sorry, my mistake. 

Rick Warren snagged Obama and McCain to attend a leadership and compassion forum in CA:

Democratic Sen. Barack Obama and Republican Sen. John McCain in August will be on the same stage for the first time in the 2008 presidential campaign. The Rev. Rick Warren has invited them to appear at a leadership and compassion forum in his Saddleback Church in Lake Forest, California, on August 16. Warren, the author of the best-selling book "The Purpose Driven Life" spoke with CNN's Wolf Blitzer by phone Tuesday from Sao Paulo, Brazil. 

That Rick Warren sure is a moderate thinking preacher who doesn't identify with the reigious right, or does he?

Dr [Rick] Warren said that homosexuality is not a natural way of life and thus not a human right. "We shall not tolerate this aspect at all," Dr Warren said.

Warren was speaking in support of Ugandan Anglicans who intend to boycott the forthcoming Lambeth Conference, and this harsh rejection of tolerance for gays and lesbians may have serious consequences in a country where homosexuals face harrassment and and the threat of imprisonment.

Warren's comment is of a piece with his support for Martin Ssempa, the Ugandan evangelist who has been a keynote speaker at a Warren conference, and who has received US global AIDS prevention funds. As I wrote in August, Ssempa wants to ensure that homosexuality remains illegal and that gays and lesbians are identified in the public mind as sexual abusers.