Pastors Who Want to Eat Their Cake and Have it Too

In case you missed it, yesterday was "Pulpit Freedom Sunday", a protest by church leaders looking to defy the IRS's edict against political endorsements:

Pastor Jody Hice of Bethlehem Baptist Church in Bethlehem, Ga., said in an interview Sunday that his sermon compared Democrat Barack Obama and Republican John McCain on abortion and gay marriage and concluded that McCain "holds more to a biblical world view."

He said he urged the Southern Baptist congregation to vote for McCain.

"The basic thrust was this was not a matter of endorsing, it's a First Amendment issue," Hice said. "To say the church can't deal with moral and societal issues if it enters into the political arena is just wrong, it's unconstitutional."

At the independent Fairview Baptist Church in Edmond, Okla., pastor Paul Blair said he told his congregation, "As a Christian and as an American citizen, I will be voting for John McCain."

"It's absolutely vital to proclaim the truth and not be afraid to proclaim the truth from our pulpits," Blair said in an interview.

Because the pastors were speaking in their official capacity as clergy, the sermons are clear violations of IRS rules, said Robert Tuttle, a professor of law and religion at George Washington University. But even if the IRS rises to the bait and a legal fight ensues, Tuttle said there's "virtually no chance" courts will strike down the prohibition.

"The government is allowed, as long as it has a reasonable basis for doing it, to treat political and nonpolitical speech differently, and that's essentially what it's done here," Tuttle said.

Whining aside, religious groups already have far too much power and infuence on the political process -- this is the last thing the country needs. The solution to this problem is simple: get rid of the tax exemption for churches.

Right Wing Slime Merchants Test the Intelligence of American Voters - #1

Anyone who watched last week's Republican National Convention knows that the rotting corpse of the GOP has no problem with bald-faced lies, distortions, innuendo, mockery and worse. And that's just the party itself -- some of their supporters make them look like Mother Theresa by comparison.

As November 4th gets closer and some of these folks start to get more and more desperate about the possibility of "their guy" not winning, we are going to see mudslinging with an ugliness level we've never seen before. Much of it will boil down to nasty deceptions that test the intelligence of the American electorate.

Will we pass? I hope so.

Entry #1 comes to us via Obama's long interview with George Stephanopolous, which in part covered his faith and how it is presented. In the video of this portion, you can hear that they are discussing the rumors of Obama's faith. Go to around the 2:30 mark and listen for a minute and you'll get the context. And possibly see what's coming next.

You guessed it: a nine-second excerpt was cut from the long interview and is now being passed around right-wing websites as "proof that Obama is a Muslim!" Leaving aside the inherently bigoted aspect of suggesting that being a Muslim is automatically something to be ashamed of, it shows that the cowardly, shameful, Rove-style "win at any cost" sort of folks who now dominate the American right will stop at nothing to get what they want.

Facts, truth, honesty, integrity, honor -- none of these mean a thing. The GOP wants its power for four more years and it has stopped even pretending that there's anything else at stake.