Uncle Sugar!

 

("Uncle Sugar" link)

Faith In Politics (But Only The Acceptable Faith)

A few weeks ago, I blogged on Rick Santorum's hypocrisy regarding faith in the public sphere. For him, there should be more faith in the public sphere (he's not a fan of the separation of Church and State) but only the faith(s) acceptable to him and people like him.

Good religion (his) should be in, bad religion (Islam, not-his) should be out.

Still no word from Lil Ricky on how that gibes with this:

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof...

But I digress.

Needless to say, this feeling is widespread amongst our good friends on the other side of the political aisle. From Huffingtonpost:

While most eyes were on the Conservative Principles Political Action Committee conference in Iowa on Saturday, many of us who follow the religious right were more interested in another conference, also held in Iowa, on Thursday and Friday. This other conference was the Rediscover God in America conference, where all the same potential 2012 Republican presidential hopefuls that appeared at the Saturday's Conservative Principles PAC conference told us what they really think -- that America should be governed by biblical law.

Sure, there was a lot of talk about important issues like the economy at the Conservative Principles PAC conference, but it was at the Rediscover God in America conference that we learned that all of our economic policies should be based on the Bible. And who did we learn this from? None other than Christian nationalist pseudo-historian David Barton, who kicked off the conference with a lengthy presentation of his usual historical hogwash. Then, one by one, as the potential Republican presidential candidates took the podium to let the audience full of pastors know just how Christian they are, each began by gushing about what a great historian and good friend David Barton is.

Among them:

But the most outrageous statement by far came from Mike Huckabee, who expressed his admiration for Barton by saying that he "almost wished" that "all Americans would be forced -- forced at gunpoint no less -- to listen to every David Barton message."

While that last part should please our 2nd Amendment friends, again no word on how forcing someone to listen to a religious message meshes with the 1st Amendment.

But that's just on the Christian end, what does Huckabee have to say about Islam? From Politics Daily:

Just days after stirring Muslim ire for ripping Islam as "the antithesis of the gospel of Christ," Republican presidential contender Mike Huckabee again sharply critiqued the religion, telling an evangelical magazine that Muslims are receiving special treatment "at the expense of others" -- apparently referring to Christians -- and that is "un-American."

In the interview with Christianity Today, Huckabee was asked about New York Rep. Peter King's controversial plan to hold hearings in March on the alleged radicalization of American Muslims, and Huckabee responded by talking about concerns that Muslims wanted to "impose" the Islamic religious law code known as Sharia on Americans.

Sharia law cannot be used to trump U.S. laws, but conservatives, including Newt Gingrich -- another GOP hopeful for 2012 -- have gained traction with their base by arguing that it can, and Huckabee seemed to be joining that camp.

"We live in a country where people are free to be Muslim. They're not free, however, to impose a Muslim law as if it were civil law," Huckabee, a Baptist and former pastor, said.

On the other hand, imposing Christianity as if it were a civil law? That's completely OK.

Can I say it again?

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof...

Can I get an amen?

More On Mike Huckabee

Last Friday, Tony Norman pointed out the dishonesty in some of Governor Mike Huckabee's walkback of his near-birther charge that President Obama had been raised in Kenya by his father and grandfather. Something about the British,

None of it was true (as Obama was raised in Hawaii and then Indonesia) but it fit the birther myth so he went with it anyway I guess. He now says he misspoke on the Kenya thing. He really meant that Obama's Indonesian father taught him to hate the Brits because of Kenya. Or something like that. None of it makes any sense. Here's Tony:

Now, Mr. Huckabee would have us believe that every word out of his mouth on that subject was a "misstatement" -- not stupidity, lying or pandering to the worst elements of his party's base.

Now, that's a stretch! With the majority of Republicans in the "Obama is an alien" camp, humoring audiences with birther proclivities shows how far even relatively sane candidates will sink for a few extra votes. It's pathetic.

But that's not the latest "Opps, I did it again, I misspoke" from Huckabee. He's now saying he didn't criticise Oscar winner Natalie Portman. From Politico:

Mike Huckabee walked back his criticisms of actress Natalie Portman for "glamorizing" out-of-wedlock pregnancies Friday, with a statement insisting he was only talking about society and that he's glad the Oscar winner plans to wed her baby's father.

And:

"In a recent media interview about my new book, A Simple Government, I discussed the first chapter, 'The Most Important Form of Government Is a Father, Mother, and Children,' " Huckabee said, referring to his appearance on The Michael Medved Show.

"I was asked about Oscar-winner Natalie Portman's out-of-wedlock pregnancy," he added. "Natalie is an extraordinary actor, very deserving of her recent Oscar and I am glad she will marry her baby's father.

"However, contrary to what the Hollywood media reported, I did not 'slam' or 'attack' Natalie Portman, nor did I criticize the hardworking single mothers in our country," he said.

"My comments were about the statistical reality that most single moms are very poor, under-educated, can't get a job, and if it weren't for government assistance, their kids would be starving to death. That's the story that we're not seeing, and it's unfortunate that society often glorifies and glamorizes the idea of having children out of wedlock."

Huh. Well what DID the "Hollywood media" report? Here's USMagazine:

She won over the Academy, but Natalie Portman doesn't have a fan in presidential prospect Mike Huckabee.

The former Arkansas governor and Fox News Channel host attacked the best actress winner, 29, who's currently expecting her first child with fiance Benjamin Millepied.

"People see a Natalie Portman who boasts, 'We're not married but we're having these children and they're doing just fine," Huckabee told radio host Michael Medved on his show Monday. "I think it gives a distorted image. It's unfortunate that we glorify and glamorize the idea of out-of- wedlock children."

Calling Portman's pregnancy "troubling," Huckabee went on to say that many single parents don't have the resources to hire help, the way someone like the Black Swan star would.

"Most single moms are very poor, uneducated, can't get a job, and if it weren't for government assistance, their kids would be starving to death and never have health care," he said. "And that's the story that we're not seeing."

OF COURSE, he's not criticizing Portman's "troubling" pregnancy when he says she's "boasting" about doing just fine. He's also not criticizing anyone or anything when he says it "gives a distorted image" to all the poor, uneducated, unemployed single moms who's kids would be dead were it not for guv'ment help.

Of course not.

The interesting thing is how consistent Governor Mike Huckabee is. Consider this interview from a few years ago.

When asked in 2008 about whether he thinks Sarah Palin's pregnant daughter (that would be Bristol Palin who was 18 and unmarried at the time, though she's no longer 18, still unmarried) will effect upcoming election he answered:

The way the media went after the daughter is the most shameful thing I’ve ever seen in my life. If anything, it just caused [evangelicals] to run to her. Everyone understands that the basis of being a Christian is that everyone has fallen short of God’s ideal. Everyone understands that. We do understand is that when there’s a problem or failures, the family sticks together. We saw a mother who gave her unconditional love to her daughter. That embodies what Christianity means. We all mess up, the issue is how we respond to it. What she showed us is exactly what we wanted to see in terms of a witness.

So on the one hand if it's a unmarried Christian teenager, who's a high school drop out and who just happens to be the daughter of a prominent Conservative, it's OK - it's the media that's acting shameful. But on the other, if it's an engaged Ivy League educated Jewish woman in her 30s who just won an Oscar who also just happens to be a supporter of the Democratic Party, it's bad bad bad for our nation.

4 more years? I don't think so!

Looks like Huckabee's huckamath and huckamiracles have failed him. The Republicans have chosen this guy for their nominee:




.

More WPTT live blogging

Hey, John! Ms. Mon reviewed last week's Off-Q here.

She got the Being There reference too.
.

_____________________________________

2pj posts on Huckabee:

http://2politicaljunkies.blogspot.com/search?q=huckabee
.

Huckabee: We need to amend the Constitution so it's in God's standards

I've been waiting all morning to find a link to Republican presidential hopeful and former Baptist preacher Mike Huckabee's latest gospel on the U.S. Constitution that I heard on MSNBC today and, finally, here it is:

I have opponents in this race who do not want to change the Constitution. But 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, to amend the Constitution so it's in God standards rather than try 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.

Of course if there's any doubt, "God's standards" would be the standards of Huckabee's own faith as opposed to -- oh I don't know -- maybe your own. It's a shame really that the framers of the Constitution did not have Huckabee on hand to supply them with "God's standards" in the first place, no?

Exactly what he would like to be codified into the supreme law of the land to match "God's standards" I don't know. But since he recently affirmed his agreement with his faith's belief that wives should submit to their husbands -- who knows -- he may want to start there, though I'm guessing that he'd want to begin with the biggest threat to the family and the institution of marriage (no, not Britney Spears): teh gays!

Then again, maybe he only wants to stone to death people who work on the Sabbath or who trim their sideburns.

Constitutional:


Not so much:


.

Mike Huckabee, Republican Candidate for President

Now that he's the current front runner, let's take a look at some of Mike Huckabee's positions on the issues.

All these quotations are from his campaign website.

Abortion:

I support and have always supported passage of a constitutional amendment to protect the right to life. My convictions regarding the sanctity of life have always been clear and consistent, without equivocation or wavering. I believe that Roe v. Wade should be over-turned.

And:

No candidate has a stronger record on the sanctity of life than I do. I have always been actively and aggressively pro-life. I first became politically active when I helped pass Arkansas' Unborn Child Amendment, which requires the state to do whatever it can to protect life.

As Governor, I used that Amendment to pass pro-life legislation. The many pro-life laws I got through my Democrat legislature are the accomplishments that give me the most pride and personal satisfaction. I banned partial birth abortion, I required parental notification, I required that a woman give informed consent before having an abortion, I required that a woman be told her baby will experience pain and be given the option of anesthesia for her baby, I allowed a woman to have her baby and leave the child safely at a hospital, and I made it a crime for an unborn child to be injured or murdered during an attack on his mother.

He's also opposed to research on embryonic stem cells.

The War on Terror:

I believe that we are currently engaged in a world war. Radical Islamic fascists have declared war on our country and our way of life. They have sworn to annihilate each of us who believe in a free society, all in the name of a perversion of religion and an impersonal god. We go to great extremes to save lives, they go to great extremes to take them. This war is not a conventional war, and these terrorists are not a conventional enemy. I will fight the war on terror with the intensity and single-mindedness that it deserves.

And:

s president, I will fight this war hard, but I will also fight it smart, using all our political, economic, diplomatic, and intelligence weapons as well as our military might. The terrorists unfortunately have a great many sympathizers all over the world, folks who are happy to show up and be filmed shouting "Death to America," but the actual number of those willing to blow themselves up is relatively few, and they train and plot in small, scattered groups.

It's an enemy conducive to being tracked down and eliminated by using the CIA and the Pentagon's Joint Special Operations Command. We can accomplish a great deal, we can achieve tremendous bang for the buck, with swift, surgical air strikes and commando raids by our elite units, working with friendly governments, as we've done with the Ethiopians in Somalia. These operations are impossible without first-rate intelligence. When the Cold War ended, we cut back on our human intelligence, just as we cut back on our armed forces, and both have come back to haunt us. As President, I will beef up our human intelligence capacity, both the operatives who gather information and the analysts who figure out what it means.

Faith and Politics:

The First Amendment requires that expressions of faith be neither prohibited nor preferred. We should not banish religion from the public square, but should guarantee access to all voices and views. We should share and debate our faith, but never seek to impose it. When discussing faith and politics, we should honor the "candid" in candidate - I have much more respect for an honest atheist than a disingenuous believer.

Iraq:

I am focused on winning. Withdrawal would have serious strategic consequences for us and horrific humanitarian consequences for the Iraqis. If we leave, Iraq's neighbors on all sides will face a refugee crisis and be drawn into the war: Iran to protect the Shiites; Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and Jordan to protect the Sunnis; and Turkey to protect its control over its own Kurd population. Iraq is a crossroads where Arab meets Persian and Kurd, Sunni meets Shiite, so if it's not a peaceful buffer, it can easily become a tinder box for the region. When we deposed Saddam, we emphasized Iraq's central location as a prime place to establish democracy and have it spread. That was the potential dramatic upside. Now we're faced with the potential dramatic downside that the terrorists are fighting to take advantage of: Iraq's central location as a prime place to create chaos and have it spread .

And now some Republican criticism of Mike Huckabee.

The Club for Growth from January, 2007:

"Governor Huckabee says he is a fiscal conservative," Club for Growth President Pat Toomey said, "but his ten-year economic-policy record as the governor of Arkansas is mixed, at best. His history includes numerous tax hikes, ballooning government spending, and increased regulation. To be sure, Governor Huckabee's record displays an occasional deference to a pro-growth philosophy, but that is only a small slice of a much bigger picture. The Club for Growth feels citizens deserve a full picture of where Governor Huckabee stands on the critical economic issues of the day."

And:

By the end of his ten-year tenure, Governor Huckabee was responsible for a 37% higher sales tax in Arkansas, 16% higher motor fuel taxes, and 103% higher cigarette taxes according to Americans for Tax Reform (01/07/07), garnering a lifetime grade of D from the free-market Cato Institute. While he is on record supporting making the Bush tax cuts permanent, he joined Democrats in criticizing the Republican Party for tilting its tax policies "toward the people at the top end of the economic scale" (Washington Examiner 09/13/06), even though objective evidence demonstrates that the Bush tax cuts have actually shifted the tax burden to higher income taxpayers.

Richard A. Viguerie on Huckabee from a press release yesterday:

Mike Huckabee’s victory in the Iowa caucuses is bad news for the Republican Party.

And from the website:

“A fiscal conservative is a person who truly understands that it’s not a problem in the federal government that our taxes are too low,” the former governor told the crowd at CPAC in 2007. “It’s a problem that our spending is too high and out of control.”

But by Gov. Huckabee’s own definition, there’s serious reason to doubt that he’s a truly fiscal conservative himself.

Much of conservatives’ concern about Gov. Huckabee centers on his record of raising taxes. He signed Americans for Tax Reform’s no-tax pledge, but only after dismissing such covenants as dangerous. He blasts the fiscally conservative Club for Growth as the “Club for Greed”. He publicly opposed repealing a tax on groceries and medicine, though he claims that he’s “always philosophically supported” axing the tax. According to ATR, after his 10 years in office, Gov. Huckabee had raised the state’s sales tax by 37 percent, motor fuel taxes by 16 percent, and cigarette taxes by 103 percent.

Not surprisingly, all these tax increases allowed for greater spending. According to Americans for Tax Reform, state spending under Gov. Huckabee rose by 65.3 percent during 1996 to 2004. The number of workers on the state’s payroll increased by 20 percent during his tenure, and its general debt obligation rose by nearly $1 billion. The spending increase is due largely to the creation of new government programs and the expansion of existing ones.

And:

Though he told The Washington Times that he supports “empowering people to make their own decisions”, Gov. Huckabee has consistently initiated and supported government meddling in the market economy. Not only did he increase Arkansas’s minimum wage from $5.15 to $6.25 per hour, but he even encouraged the U.S. Congress to do the same thing nationally. He ordered Arkansas regulatory agencies to investigate “price-gouging” in the nursing-home industry and threatened to launch a government investigation of “gouging” on gas prices after September 11, 2001. He signed a bill forbidding private companies from increasing prices on services like roof repair and tree removal by 10 percent in advance of a natural disaster.

Even Rush Limbaugh has his doubts. This from The Politico:

"Ladies and gentlemen, Gov. Huckabee, mighty fine man and is a great Christian, is not a conservative, he’s just not," Limbaugh said. "If you look at his record as governor, he’s got some conservative tendencies on things but he’s certainly not the most conservative of the candidates running on the Republican side."

From Rush's website. A Huckabee supporter called in to plead his case:

Well, I've been listening, I'm a 24/7 subscriber and everything, but I'm also a big Huckabee fan. I think you've been unfair, and I think Club for Growth has been unfair. Ronald Reagan had the same problems as what Huckabee had in his -- went up double, taxes went up. And it's because of the format of -- it's the format of the government, you know, you have to have a balanced budget as governor.

And Rush responded:

Can you tell me -- I mean, I understand the technique here, because this is the second or third attempt on the part of Huckabee supporters, who, by the way, you know, I think he's a fine man. He's just not a conservative. And this is what, to be quite honest with you, offends me greatly with this attempt to compare him to Ronald Reagan. You have to go back and cite their records as governors, some sort of a non-establishment candidate and so forth. Could you tell me something about Huckabee rather than trying to compare him to Ronald Reagan, a comparison of which I will blow out of the water in mere moments?

And then:

Here's my problem with this. I say this with all compassion, and I say this with love and respect for all of you who support Huckabee. But how dare you compare Mike Huckabee to Ronald Reagan. That is simply intellectually vapid, and it's grasping at straws. Ronald Reagan not only served as a governor, but he wrote and spoke for years about conservatism. Ronald Reagan was there at the beginning in 1964 about conservatism. I said yesterday, I have not spent a lifetime advocating conservative principles only to throw them away to embrace a particular candidate. I don't support open borders and amnesty. I don't support the release of hundreds of criminals. McCain supports open borders and amnesty. Huckabee released hundreds of criminals. I don't support repeated increases in taxes. I don't support national health care, whether you call it a children's program or whatever it is. I don't support anti-war rhetoric. I don't support Republican candidates trashing the war in Iraq when we're winning it. I don't support Republican candidates claiming the president doesn't read the National Intelligence Estimates as an excuse for him not knowing what the hell is in one. And that's Governor Huckabee.

As a Republican, when you've lost Rush Limbaugh you've lost everything.

Betting on Iowa

Anyone out there want to hazard a guess as to who will win in Iowa tonight? If you believe you're a real political maven, you can actually bet some cold, hard cash on the answer at http://www.intrade.com/ . So who do the markets predict will win in Iowa? Here's the line on that:

DEM.IOWA.OBAMA
Barack Obama to Win
BID: 60.0 ASK: 64.9 LAST: 64.9 VOLUME: 3185 CHANGE: +8.9

REP.IOWA.HUCKABEE
Mike Huckabee to Win
BID: 54.5 ASK: 59.5 LAST: 53.2 VOL: 2246 CHANGE: -5.8

However, they're still betting that Hillary Clinton will take the nomination for the presidency on the Democratic side:

2008DEM.NOM.CLINTON
Hillary Clinton to be the Democratic Presidential Nominee in 2008
BID: 61.1 ASK: 64.5 LAST: 61.1 VOL.: 362815 CHANGE: -3.8

And for the Republican nomination?

It's a bit of dead heat between McCain and Giuliani:

2008.GOP.NOM.MCCAIN
John McCain to be the Republican Presidential Nominee in 2008
BID: 26.5 ASK: 27.5 LAST: 27.4 VOL.: 174149 CHANGE: +3.4

2008.GOP.NOM.GIULIANI
Rudy Giuliani to be the Republican Presidential Nominee in 2008
BID: 24.5 ASK: 25.0 LAST: 25.9 VOL.: 143834 CHANGE: -1.9
.

A thought

Benazir Bhutto
1953- 2007

While much can (and will) be said pro and con about Benazir Bhutto, it is hard to imagine many of our own candidates for president being willing to risk their own very lives for democracy. And, it is completely impossible to imagine the current residents of the White House doing so.

(Most crass use of Bhutto's death by a candidate for president so far: Huckabee's warning to watch out for "any unusual activity of Pakistanis coming into the country" to demonstrate his new found religion on border security and illegal immigrants.)
.

HELP!

Seriously: Help! I listened to the whole thing and now I need some help.

"Huckabee will take terrorists down
And fight to keep the right to life around
Illegal immigrants stay on your ground
Won't you please vote Huckabee?"

Actually, I would have expected something like this to have come from the Ron Paulites.

(h/t to Atrios.)
.

Jack Kelly Sunday

Has it really only been a week since this?

Sheesh, time flies don't it?

Anyway, there's not much to this week's column by our friend Jack Kelly. He's going through the various political algorithms facing the Republican candidates for President. Though it's a tangled trail. Let's take a look.

He starts off with Mike Huckabee (but note how he treats the former Arkansas Governor - it's very telling for the rest of the column).

The Huckaboom may turn out to be the best thing that's ever happened to former Massachussetts Gov. Mitt Romney.

The contest for the GOP nomination for president may well be determined by how frightened other Republicans are by former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee

What a subtle deflection! In two short paragraphs, he's succeeded in acknowledging Huckabee's near-frontrunner status AND foretold his possible political demise.

A few paragraphs later we learn from Jack that Huckabee's base is almost entirely the evangelical wing of God's Own Party (what, the evangenicals haven't already absorbed that entire metaphorical bird?). Then we get to what Jack really wants us to know:

His evangelical base has pushed Mike Huckabee to near the front because there are so many other candidates, and so little enthusiasm for them. But the Huckaboom is likely to fade as those charmed by his personality learn more about his policy views and his spotty record as governor.

If the Huckaboom fades, who benefits?

First, let's consider what happens if it doesn't. Most Republicans think Mr. Huckabee would be as bad a president as Jimmy Carter, for essentially the same reasons. So if Mr. Huckabee wins the Iowa caucuses Jan. 3 by a comfortable margin, there will be a rush to rally around the candidate deemed most likely to stop him. Since Rudy Giuliani has been sinking so fast in the polls you'd think he had an anvil on his chest, that figures to be either Mr. Romney or Arizona Sen. John McCain, whoever wins the New Hampshire primary Jan 8.

See? Jack's no fan of Mike Huckabee. He goes through a few scenarios when he settles on who he really likes.

There is another plausible scenario. Suppose Mike Huckabee wins, narrowly, in Iowa, with former Sen. Fred Thompson a close third. Mr. McCain goes on to win, narrowly, in New Hampshire. Mr. Huckabee is alive, but now seems very unlikely to be the nominee. Mr. Romney is on life support, but not dead, because his defeats were so narrow, and his wallet is so big. Mr. McCain is revived, but there is no rush to him because fear of Mr. Huckabee ultimately winning the nomination has diminished. And then there is Fred.

Former Sen. Fred Thompson has been written off because his campaign to date has been, to put it kindly, lackluster. But his political obituary may be as premature as Mr. McCain's.

But all is not lost:

In a campaign marked more by who voters are against than by who they are for, Fred Thompson is a safe choice. His views -- which he articulates well -- offend none of the core constituencies in the GOP. The more Mitt and Huck fight, the better he looks to Iowa voters.

If Mike Huckabee's been the hare in this race, Fred Thompson is the tortoise. In Aesop's fable, it was the tortoise who eventually won.

We'll see if Jack Kelly's political acumen is as sharp as his national security analyses.

Found this on youtube. Hope you like it, Jack!

Mike Huckabee's Message to Iowa

Huckabee has a new ad (h/t to The Burgher for sending it our way):



Strange, but it seems that he's using the same agency as Rudy.

More On Huckabee

It's a rare event when the OPJ and I actually blog on the same subject but it happened this morning. Luckily for the blog, her posting read better - so after about 3 minutes I took mine down.

There is one aspect to the story that she didn't touch on. So here it is.

When Governor Huckabee said:

I hope we answer the alarm clock and take this nation back for Christ.

He was speaking at a conference (more on that in a bit) during the wave of school shootings in the late 90s:

[T]he catalysts for the nation's recent school shootings -- including the one March 24 near Jonesboro that left four students and a teacher dead and 10 others wounded -- were harder to see but were driven by "the winds of spiritual change in a nation that has forgotten its God."

"Government knows it does not have the answer, but it's arrogant and acts as though it does," Huckabee said. "Church does have the answer but will cowardly deny that it does and wonder when the world will be changed."

The shootings were just one more wake-up call to the nation, he said.

"I fear we will turn and hit the snooze button one more time and lose this great republic of ours."

Set aside his "Blame America First" message, you can see where he gets the "answer the alarm clock" metaphor.

Now about that conference. The story is here.

Huckabee, an ordained Southern Baptist minister, addressed his contemporaries at the two-day Pastors' Conference, which continues today. The three-day Southern Baptist Convention begins Tuesday here in the heartland of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and the city in which the Mormons have their world headquarters.

Now why would the Southern Baptist Convention go to the heart of the Church of Latter Day Saints?

They were looking to convert all those Mormons. Take a look:

''We're looking at the biggest evangelistic outreach in the Salt Lake Valley in history,'' said Phil Roberts, an official with the Baptists' North American Mission Board (and no relation to Clint Roberts). ''There may be as many as 50,000 personal knocks on the door,'' he added.

And why would they want such an outreach?

Turns out that the Southern Baptists don't fully agree with the ideas found within the Church of Latter Day Saints. The North American Missions Board is the domestic missions agency of the Southern Baptist Convention. Their website links to a site called Apologetics.

On that site in a page labelled New Religions and Cults. And there you will find the NAMB's biblical responses to among others the Nation of Islam, Scientology, postmodernism, the Jehovah's Witnesses and the Mormons.

Go read some of the responses, if you like. They assert that the Jesus Christ of the LDS is not the same Jesus Christ of the Bible, that God as described by the LDS is not the same God as described by the Bible and so on.

As with any such metaphysical argument there's no way of establishing which side is right (many thanks to A.J. Ayer on that - indeed Ayer would go further and say that each assertion is simply nonsense). As I am an agnostic, I won't be taking any sides but it seems pretty obvious to me why the Southern Baptist Convention doesn't consider the Church of Latter Day Saints to be a Christian demonination.

And it might explain some of the stresses found within Gods Own Party in relation to Mitt Romney.

Taking Back the Nation for Christ (one Republican primary vote at a time)

Should anyone be surprised that Republican presidential hopeful and ordained Southern Baptist minister Mike Huckabee believes that "a wife is to submit herself graciously to the servant leadership of her husband" and that "I hope we answer the alarm clock and take this nation back for Christ"?

Well, no. Especially as these "revelations" come on the heels of fellow Republican presidential hopeful Mitt Romney's "I'm a Christian, he's a Christian, she's a Christian, we're a Christian, wouldn't you like to be a Christian too?" speech last week.

While Chris Mathews, Joe Scarborough and Pat Buchanan practically wet themselves over at MSNBC in praise of Romney's words -- and even John McIntire deemed it, "a nice speech on religious intolerance" on OffQ -- I found it to be a cynical screed against anyone in this nation who doesn't happen to worship the God of Abraham.

First, one should note the absurdity of Romney, a Mormon, who said, "…based on the numbers of American Muslims [as a percentage] in our population, I cannot see that a cabinet position would be justified. But of course, I would imagine that Muslims could serve at lower levels of my administration" when Mormons comprise a whole 1.3% of US residents compared to Muslim's 0.5% making any kind of speech on religious tolerance.

In his address (to Christians), Romney called secularism a religion which leads one to repeat from the line from The Princess Bride, "You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means."

He went on to declare that "Freedom requires religion."

Hmmm, tell that to anyone in Afghanistan who disagreed with the Taliban...

While saying he respected our Constitution, he confused that document with the Declaration of Independence. It's the declaration which says that men are "endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights." (Romney repeatedly made statements such as "I will not separate us from the God who gave us liberty," and "American acknowledge that liberty is a gift of God not an indulgence by government" and "in that spirit let us give thanks to the divine author of freedom.").

Meanwhile, the supreme law of the land -- the US Constitution -- makes no mention of God, a Creator, or even a "divine author."

It takes pains to not only say that "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof..." but to say that "no religious test shall ever be required as a qualification to any office or public trust under the United States." (Here's a clue, Mitt: If you should god forbid (no pun intended) become President, it's the Constitution that you'd have to swear/affirm to uphold and not The Declaration of Independence.)

But again and again, Romney puts forth the notion that the only good American is a religious American:

'Our constitution was made for a moral and religious people.' [Quoting John Adams]

We are a nation 'Under God' and in God, we do indeed trust.

We should acknowledge the Creator as did the Founders - in ceremony and word.

I will take care to separate the affairs of government from any religion, but I will not separate us from 'the God who gave us liberty.'

And you can be certain of this: Any believer in religious freedom, any person who has knelt in prayer to the Almighty, has a friend and ally in me.

The rest of us, I guess, can go to hell.
.

Mike Huckabee And The Rapist

Rasmussen has a poll out showing former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee ahead of the Republican pack:

The Rasmussen Reports daily Presidential Tracking Poll for Wednesday shows a new national leader in the race for the Republican Presidential Nomination. While enjoying an amazing surge, Mike Huckabee has earned support from 20% of Likely Republican Primary Voters nationwide.

Rudy's three points behind at 17%.

Most of the Huckabee-news hitting the left side of the blogoshere these days is about one guy: Wayne Dumond. It shows, among other things, how crazy the Clinton-hating got in the mid-to-late 90s and how deep Huckabee was in it.

Wayne Dumond was a guy who was in prison for some very bad things. He was paroled while Mike Huckabee was governor of Arkansas. Oh yea, the rightwing media thought that a former governor of Arkansas (and that would be Bill Clinton) was too hard on Dumond because Dumond had raped a distant relative of his. Atrios describes things this way:

Dumond was let go because right wing lunatics believed that Bill Clinton sent his goons to castrate an "innocent" man because one of his "alleged" victims was a distant relative. That this story was, you know, pretty much insane didn't stop it from getting regular play in the conservative press.

Now this has hit the Huffington Post:

As governor of Arkansas, Mike Huckabee aggressively pushed for the early release of a convicted rapist despite being warned by numerous women that the convict had sexually assaulted them or their family members, and would likely strike again. The convict went on to rape and murder at least one other woman.

Confidential Arkansas state government records, including letters from these women, obtained by the Huffington Post and revealed publicly for the first time, directly contradict the version of events now being put forward by Huckabee.

Waas goes on:

While on the campaign trail, Huckabee has claimed that he supported the 1999 release of Wayne Dumond because, at the time, he had no good reason to believe that the man represented a further threat to the public. Thanks to Huckabee's intervention, conducted in concert with a right-wing tabloid campaign on Dumond's behalf, Dumond was let out of prison 25 years before his sentence would have ended.

Murray Waas had the story of the parole here. Huckabee said there was no way to have known what Dumond was going to do after being released. Huckabee met in private with the parole board before Dumond was released. He never checked the parole boards files.

Had Huckabee examined in detail the parole board’s files regarding Dumond, he would have known Dumond had compiled a lengthy criminal resume.

In 1972, Dumond was arrested in the beating death of a man in Oklahoma. Dumond was not charged in that case after agreeing to testify for the prosecution against two others. But he admitted on the witness stand that he was among those who struck the murder victim with a claw hammer.

In 1973, Dumond was arrested and placed on probation for five years for admitting in Oregon to molesting a teen-age girl in the parking lot of a shopping center.

Three years later, according to Arkansas State Police records, Dumond admitted to raping an Arkansas woman. (Dumond later repudiated the confession, saying he was coerced by police.) Dumond was never formally charged in that case; the woman, saying she feared for her life, did not press charges.

Waas analyses the rightwing coverage supporting Dumond:

The governor was also apparently relying on information he got from Steve Dunleavy, first as a correspondent for the tabloid television show “A Current Affair” and later as a columnist for the New York Post.

Much of what Dunleavy has written about the Dumond saga has been either unverified or is demonstrably untrue. Dunleavy has all but accused [Clinton relative] Ashley Stevens of having fabricated her rape, derisively referring to her in one column as a “so-called victim,” and brusquely asserting in another, “That rape never happened.”

The columnist wrote that Dumond was a “Vietnam veteran with no record” when in fact he did have a criminal record. He claimed there existed DNA evidence by “one of the most respected DNA experts in the country” to exonerate Dumond, even though there was no such evidence. He wrote that Bill Clinton had personally intervened to keep Dumond in prison, even though Clinton had recused himself in 1990 from any involvement in the case because of his distant relationship with Stevens.

Republican political ethics clear, plain and simple.