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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.

Those darn gays and their desire to treated like any other American couple...they've forced James Dobson's Focus on the Family to announce layoffs of approximately 20% of their work force, or 202 employees, due in no small part to the more than $500,000 spent on the Yes on 8 campaign. Colorado Independent:

Focus on the Family announced yesterday afternoon that 202 jobs will be cut companywide — an estimated 20 percent of its workforce. Initial reports bring the total number of remaining employees to around 950.

Focus on the Family is poised to announce major layoffs to its Colorado Springs-based ministry and media empire today. The cutbacks come just weeks after the group pumped more than half a million dollars into the successful effort to pass a gay-marriage ban in California.

Critics are holding up the layoffs, which come just two months after the organization’s last round of dismissals, as a sad commentary on the true priorities of the ministry.

“If I were their membership I would be appalled,” said Mark Lewis, a longtime Colorado Springs activist who helped organize a Proposition 8 protest in Colorado Springs on Saturday. “That [Focus on the Family] would spend any money on anything that’s obviously going to get blocked in the courts is just sad. [Prop. 8] is guaranteed to lose, in the long run it doesn’t have a chance — it’s just a waste of money.”

In all, Focus pumped $539,000 in cash and another $83,000 worth of non-monetary support into the measure to overturn a California Supreme Court ruling that allowed gays and lesbians to marry in that state. The group was the seventh-largest donor to the effort in the country. The cash contributions are equal to the salaries of 19 Coloradans earning the 2008 per capita income of $29,133.

In addition Elsa Prince, the auto parts heiress and longtime funder of conservative social causes who sits on the Focus on the Family board, contributed another $450,000 to Prop. 8.[..]

Lewis, the Colorado Springs activist, wonders whether the families who donate to the nonprofit ministry, realize where their funds really end up.

“Seriously, I would imagine their supporters have got to be asking the question about whether their church is really practicing their theology.”

Frankly, I've been questioning that long before they started laying off employees. More importantly, the California Supreme Court has agreed to hear the appeal on Prop. 8, and it appears it is on the question of legality of revising the state Constitution as opposed to amending it.

And if you really want to get conspiracy-minded (meaning an area that the Supreme Court would never actually touch), Mark Crispin Miller wants to know why the exit polls show that Prop. 8 was defeated, by the same ratio it was eventually passed. Remember, discrepancy in results like that were exactly the justification we gave for overturning and demanding a new election in the Ukraine.

In this the season of their discontent, Republican leaders are pointing the finger of blame, all the while positioning themselves to take over their battered and bruised party in 2012. So it is with Mike Huckabee. In his new book, the former Arkansas Governor, Baptist minister and Fox News host skewers presidential rival Mitt Romney and castigates leaders of the religious right who cast their lot with someone else. But while Huckabee looks forward to the future battle for the soul of the Republican Party in his latest book, it is worth remembering the culture war he advocated in past ones. And apparently, he will have soon have company in author Sarah Palin.

As Time describes, Huckabee's tome (Do The Right Thing: Inside the Movement That's Bringing Common Sense Back to America) is part political memoir, part policy prescription - and part payback. Former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney, his rival in courting the GOP's religious right base during the primaries, is mocked as "anything but conservative until he changed the light bulbs in his chandelier in time to run for president." Aggravating matters still, Huckabee "took as a sign of total disrespect" Mitt's refusal to call and congratulate him on his victory in the Iowa caucus which ultimately derailed Romney's campaign.

According to Time, much of Huckabee's venom is directed at his ersatz Christian conservative allies who backed other candidates during the Republican primaries. He blasts Pat Robertson and Bob Jones for backing Rudy Giuliani and Mitt Romney, respectively. Huckabee pans Gary Bauer for his "ever-changing reason to deny me his support." Lamenting "that so many people of faith had moved from being prophetic voices," Governor Huckabee unleashed his fury at the End Times Pastor John Hagee who ultimately backed McCain:

"I asked if he had prayed about this and believed this was what the Lord wanted him to do," Huckabee writes of his conversation with Hagee. "I didn't get a straight answer."

Huckabee's evident feelings of betrayal towards his fellow culture warriors on display in this new book are understandable. After all, among the first of his six books was everything they could have asked for.

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My friends at MM made me this clip. I didn't have a chance to make it, but it's shocking. And Newt Gingrich wants to run for president ladies and gentlemen. This is an issue that America isknown for. It's called "FREEDOM." And it should be fought vigorously. Freedoms have never come easy in America. Women couldn't even vote until the 1920's and we all know about the civil rights movement.

Country Fair:

On the November 14 edition of Fox News' The O'Reilly Factor, in reference to actions by individual protesters of Proposition 8, the recently passed California ballot initiative amending the state constitution to ban same-sex marriage, Fox News contributor Newt Gingrich stated

O'REILLY: OK, now, the culture war. I know you've been flying around the country, and you're doing stuff. In the last three or four days, this is really nasty stuff. I mean, you know, hyper -- we're gonna show you some of the video. A woman getting a cross smashed out of her hand. We had a church in Michigan invaded by gay activists. We're gonna show you the video on Monday of that -- we have exclusively. We had a guy in Sacramento fired from his job. We had boycotts called on restaurants.

I mean, it is getting out of control, very few days after the election. How do you assess that?

GINGRICH: Look, I think there is a gay and secular fascism in this country that wants to impose its will on the rest of us, is prepared to use violence, to use harassment. I think it is prepared to use the government if it can get control of it. I think that it is a very dangerous threat to anybody who believes in traditional religion. And I think if you believe in historic Christianity, you have to confront the fact. And, frank -- for that matter, if you believe in the historic version of Islam or the historic version of Judaism, you have to confront the reality that these secular extremists are determined to impose on you acceptance of a series of values that are antithetical, they're the opposite, of what you're taught in Sunday school.

Gingrich thinks gay marriage is a very dangerous threat to traditional religion. Can he tell me how they are dangerous? Just because he doesn't believe in it doesn't mean it will hurt anyone. This is ignorance. The right needs an issue to motivate their base, but this lack of freedom for the gay community actually hurts their lives on a daily basis where as in the religious community it hurts no one. Are they honestly afraid that their kids will go gay or something? I know what James Dobson thinks:

They want to destroy the institution of marriage. It will destroy marriage. It will destroy the Earth."

That is pure lunacy as we know. All gays want to do is part of that institution and have the same rights as all Americans do.

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.

Overlooked perhaps in the historic vote that made Barack Obama the nation's first African-American president is something that didn't happen. With the defeat of the McCain/Palin ticket and its extremist anti-abortion platform, Americans voted against an abrogation of women's reproductive rights that might have taken a generation to undo. And by rejecting draconian ballot measures in Colorado, South Dakota and California, voters protected a woman's right to choose - at least for now.

To be sure, Obama's victory prevented the emergence of conservative Supreme Court supermajority committed to sweeping away Roe v. Wade. With the potential retirement of Justices Stevens (88) and Ginsburg (83), Obama may the opportunity to make at least two nominations to the Court. (There may be 14 openings on the nation's appellate courts, all but one which currently has a Republican majority.) Given Justice Kennedy's condescending and paternalistic opinion in the 5-4 Gonzales v. Carhart case upholding the so-called federal partial birth abortion ban, the direction of the Court and the fate of Roe surely hung in the balance last Tuesday.

On that point, John McCain, Sarah Palin and the Republican Party were quite clear. McCain not only supported judicial appointees in the mold of John Roberts and Samuel Alito, he reversed course to support overturning Roe v. Wade. And to be sure, the 2008 Republican platform incorporated Palin's extremist views on abortion, banning the procedure even in cases of rape and incest:

"We support a human life amendment to the Constitution, and we endorse legislation to make clear that the Fourteenth Amendment's protections apply to unborn children."

In Colorado, anti-abortion activists tried – and failed - to enshrine the GOP plank's logical extreme in the state constitution.

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Tony Perkins claims on CNN's Anderson Cooper 360 that gay people are "rioting" over Proposition 8's narrow success at the California polls:

Perkins: The people have played by the rules. Why will not the homosexual activists quit rioting, quit, you know, attacking Mormons, and using religious bigotry. And if they want to change the laws, get the consent of the people.

Anderson Cooper: Where have the riots been, Tony? Where have the riots been?

Perkins: Well, they've spray-painted churches in California, they've been jumping on police cars.

Lisa Bloom of In Session proceeds to give Perkins hell. You can see from the videotape that these are peaceful demonstrations.

Perkins also has a peculiar definition of "playing by the rules," considering that, as Bloom just pointed out, the rules for amending the California Constitution were clearly not followed with this vote.

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

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.)

For the second time in six weeks, John McCain has challenged the press and the public to "name a single issue" where's he changed positions since 2000. Sadly for the supposed maverick, his growing list of reversals, flip-flops and turnabouts now numbers in the dozens.

None of which deterred McCain from pretending otherwise in an interview Wednesday with the CBS affiliate in Washington, DC. Asked, "where is the John McCain from 2000?" and "has something changed," Mr. Straight Talk responded:

"You’ll have to tell me what’s changed. I love it when they say, 'Oh McCain has changed.' And I say, 'What have I changed on?' They can’t name a single issue or they’ll name an issue and it's false. I’m the same guy. I’m proud of our campaign."

Last month, McCain threw down the same gauntlet during his disastrous appearance on ABC's The View. When host Joy Behar lamented, "I don’t see the old John McCain…I understand why - you want to get elected," McCain instinctively went to battle stations:

"I’ve been through this litany before, where I say, 'ok, what specific area have I quote changed?' Nobody can name it...I am the same person and I have the same principles."

As it turns out, not so much.

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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. 

Gov. Sarah Palin thinks the Founding Fathers wrote the Pledge of Allegiance---including the phrase 'under God'.  No, really. The Christian Right has made this a huge talking point for their cause, but they never tell you that it was never part of the original pledge. I've had this clip of the pledge from the 1945 movie The Bells of St Mary's sitting on my servers for a long time and finally found a good use for it. Notice---there is no "under God" in it.

Download | play   Download | play

 From an Eagle Forum Candidate Questionnaire:

Q: Are you offended by the phrase "Under God" in the Pledge of Allegiance? Why or why not?

PALIN: Not on your life. If it was good enough for the Founding Fathers, its good enough for me and I'll fight in defense of our Pledge of Allegiance.

The phrase was added in 1954.

Is she ready to fight Bing Crosby and Ingrid Bergman too? Here's the full questionnaire. Have some fun.

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Undeterred by his ongoing treatment for brain cancer, Senator Ted Kennedy walked on to the stage tonight at the Democratic National Convention and gave one hell of a speech. As the crowd chanted "Teddy!" he inspired and captivated the audience with all the fire and passion we've come to expect from him over the years.

"...Nothing - nothing is going to keep me away from this special gathering tonight! I have come here tonight to stand with you to change America, to restore it's future, to rise to our best ideals and to elect Barack Obama President of the United States. As I look ahead I am strengthened by family and friendship. So many of you have been with me in the happiest days and the hardest days. Together we have known success and seen setbacks, victory and defeat, but we have never lost our belief that we are all called to a better country and a newer world. And I pledge to you that I will be there next January on the floor of the United States Senate..." 

On Saturday, August 16th, megachurch preacher and Purpose-Driven Life author Rick Warren will host the first joint appearance of campaign '08 by Barack Obama and John McCain. In what CNN is billing as the "Compassionate Leader Forum," Warren will lead separate conversations with Obama and McCain, who will meet on stage at the beginning and/or end of the event at Warren's Saddleback Church in Lake Forest, California.

While the anti-gay Warren and his co-sponsor the multi-denominational group Faith in Public Life will apparently be the arbiters of presidential compassion, Reverend Warren insists Saturday's event is not about "gotcha" questions for the candidates:

"This is a critical time for our nation and the American people deserve to hear both candidates speak from the heart -- without interruption -- in a civil and thoughtful format absent the partisan 'gotcha' questions that typically produce heat instead of light."

But for the good people at the Red State blog, that's simply not good enough. Declaring that "abortion on demand is non-negotiable," Red State's open letter to Reverend Warren insists he promise to confront Obama on the issue. Failing to do so at the event, "it would be better to cancel it." No doubt, Rick Warren will ask Barack Obama about his views on abortion and women's reproductive rights.

But among the questions on AIDS, poverty, climate change and the candidates' personal faith, the notoriously reserved on religion John McCain can rest assured he won't face tough questions about his own.

Here, then, are 10 questions Rick Warren won't ask John McCain.

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PFAW's Right Wing Watch:

For two hours earlier this week, pastors gathered at more than 200 sites throughout California, Arizona, and Florida to be exhorted by national Religious Right leaders like Tony Perkins, Harry Jackson, Maggie Gallagher, and Chuck Colson and others to hold nothing back in their efforts to fight against marriage equality.  The People For the American Way Foundation today released a memo [PDF] chronicling the call and outlining the Right's plans for the weeks ahead:

The primary focus of the call was Proposition 8 in California, described by Colson as "the Armageddon of the culture war." Many speakers invoked the language of warfare, raising up an army of believers, putting soldiers in the streets, being on the front lines of a battle. Lou Engle actually described a massive rally planned in Qualcomm stadium on November 1 as a "blitzkrieg moment."The primary focus of the call was Proposition 8 in California, described by Colson as "the Armageddon of the culture war." Many speakers invoked the language of warfare, raising up an army of believers, putting soldiers in the streets, being on the front lines of a battle. Lou Engle actually described a massive rally planned in Qualcomm stadium on November 1 as a "blitzkrieg moment." 

The collective paranoia of the Religious Right is downright scary; everything is a jihad for them.  Tom DeLay, that poster child for the Religious Right's grasp on ethics and walking in His shoes (/snark), who went on the radio earlier this month and said that God created America to propagate Christianity.  Add to this the fringe movement to convince the Religious Right that Obama is, in fact, the Anti-Christ and you have the makings of one hell of an election season. 

If only the FSM would touch them with his noodly appendage and get them to chill out.