Does Rush Limbaugh Still Run The Republican Party?

Penny Nance is an unhinged fanatic from the dark fringes of the American Taliban. She heads the hate group Concerned Women for America, which is only concerned with a kind of cultish extremism that has no place in America. She would however have felt right at home as a leader of the Bund Deutscher Mädel (the League of German Maidens), the Werk Glaube und Schönheit (the Belief and Beauty Society), the Frauenwerk or any of the organizations that made up the Nazi Women's League headed by the Penny Nance of her day, Gertrud Scholtz-Klink. When Hitler insisted that for the German woman her "world is her husband, her family, her children, and her home" he was perfectly in tune with the Taliban-- the one in Afghanistan, the one in Saudi Arabia and, of course, the one right here in America.

Wednesday Nance was savaging Michael Steele and demanding he resign as head of the RNC. She argues that "The new RNC chairman needs to be both a fiscal and social conservative, and must represent the party in a professional and engaging way... There is simply too much at stake for the Republicans to keep Michael Steele as the RNC chairman. If the party wants to maintain its gains among conservatives and independents, the GOP needs to start gearing for the 2012 election now. There is no time to waste on party politics and the crisis communications that have been commonplace at the RNC since Steele took over."

While the GOP picked up historic numbers of seats in this past election, it was in spite of, not because of, Michael Steele. In an unbelievable, and oftentimes comical, reign of just two years as RNC chairman, Steele managed to embarrass his party through his gaffe-prone media appearances.  He was specifically tasked with helping to bring African-Americans into the party, but when asked if there were any good reasons why they should vote Republican, Steele said they don’t really have a good reason. He also flip-flopped on his opposition to abortion during an interview with GQ Magazine and slammed conservative radio talk show host Rush Limbaugh, resulting in an embarrassing showdown (which Steele lost).

It wasn't as stinging towards Steele as the resignation letter from his own former political director, Gentry Collins (real name) but then again, Nance isn't running for RNC head the way Collins is (not to mention ex-Michigan GOP leader Saul Anuzis, Maria Cino (one of Boehner's favorite lobbyists), Ann Wagner, Norm Coleman, Wisconsin GOP Chairman Reince Priebus, former RNC Chair Mike Duncan, Connecticut GOP Chairman Chris Healy, California GOP Chairman Ron Nehring, some KKK leader from South Carolina and half a dozen other kooks and nuts).

But it's funny that Nance brought up the Rush Limbaugh incident. Remember how the feisty Steel reacted when someone pointed out on CNN that Rush Limbaugh is the de facto head of the Republican Party? Steele went nuts, insisting: “I’m the de facto leader of the Republican Party... Let’s put it into context here. Rush Limbaugh is an entertainer. Rush Limbaugh, his whole thing is entertainment. Yes, it’s incendiary. Yes, it’s ugly.” You probably remember what happened next, since it has been repeated ad infinitum by Republican toadies who forgot someone might be listening. Dave Neiwert and John Amato captured it in their most recent book, Over The Cliff:

The next day, Limbaugh launched a brutal verbal assault on
Michael Steele:

"I’m not in charge of the Republican Party, and I don’t want to be. I would be embarrassed to say that I’m in charge of the Republican Party in a sad-sack state that it’s in. If I were chairman of the Republican Party, given the state that it’s in, I would quit... Republicans and conservatives are sick and tired of being talked down to, they’re sick and tired of being lectured to. And until you show some understanding and respect for who they are, you’re gonna have a tough time rebuilding your party."

Steele, too, abjectly apologized, telling Politico in a telephone interview: “My intent was not to go after Rush-- I have enormous respect for Rush Limbaugh... I was maybe a little bit inarticulate...There was no attempt on my part to diminish his voice or his leadership.” Meanwhile, there were whispers from anonymous “Republican advisers to Congress” that unless Steele shut his trap, there would be a special session of the RNC to remove him. Steele said no more about Limbaugh, other than to praise him.

And as Amato and Neiwert pointed out, Steele is far from the only Republican politician who grovels in front of Limbaugh. There was a really funny dust-up between Limbaugh, Boehner and one of Boehner's lackeys:

Representative John Boehner of Ohio, in an interview with right-wing radio host Hugh Hewitt, denied that his ideas came from Limbaugh: “I like Rush, but, he’s a talk show host, and I’m in the policy-making business.”

Limbaugh responded by blasting him as weak: “He’s [Obama is] obviously more frightened of me than he is Mitch McConnell.

He is more frightened of me than he is of, say, John Boehner, which doesn’t say much about our party.”

Representative Phil Gingrey of Georgia came to Boehner’s defense in these remarks to Politico:

I mean, it’s easy if you’re Sean Hannity or Rush Limbaugh or even sometimes Newt Gingrich to stand back and throw bricks. You don’t have to try to do what’s best for your people and your party. You know you’re just on these talk shows and you’re living well and plus you stir up a bit of controversy and gin the base and that sort of thing.

The next morning, Gingrey issued a retraction, declaring that he saw “eye to eye with Rush,” and that afternoon was on Limbaugh’s show, abjectly apologizing:

"Rush, thank you so much. I thank you for the opportunity, of course this is not exactly the way I wanted to come on... Mainly, I want to express to you and all your listeners my very sincere regret for those comments I made yesterday to Politico... I clearly ended up putting my foot in my mouth on some of those comments... I regret those stupid comments."

I wonder if they'll run all the bills they try to pass by Limbaugh before they introduce them. I just ran across this wonderful old video from a couple years ago that seems to be as relevant as anything right now, especially on a nice quiet Black Friday like today:

Streams Of Consciousness

Since my John Wayne random quote went over so well last night, I found another one-- from the same 1971 Playboy interview-- for tonight. Looks like African-Americans weren't the only ethnic group the right-wing icon had some antipathy for. Even off camera he didn't cotton to Native Americans much-- or at least didn't seem to be able to walk a mile in their shoes:

"I don't feel we did wrong in taking this country away from the Indians. There were great numbers of people who needed new land and the Indians were selfishly trying to keep it for themselves."

Which circle of hell is that again? The fourth is for avarice. Of course, the seventh (for violence), eighth (for fraud) and ninth (for treachery) are far worse places to spend eternity, according to Dante... but what does he know?

Miss McConnell, Caught In A Deadly Obama/DeMint Pincer, Raises His White Boxers On A Stick And Surrenders On Earmarks

Jerry Lewis (R-CA) must be flipping out but it looks like earmarks will be going the way of the dodo bird. McConnell, a major earmarker from way back, could no longer take the intense pressure from both Obama and DeMint, DeMint backed by whatever power the teabaggers are reckoned to have.

In a floor speech, McConnell said: "There is simply no doubt that the abuse of this practice has caused Americans to view it as a symbol of the waste and out-of-control spending that every Republican in Washington is determined to fight.

"And unless people like me show the American people that we’re willing to follow through on small or even symbolic things, we risk losing them on our broader efforts to cut spending and rein in government," McConnell said. 

McConnell has been a staunch defender of earmarks, arguing that banning them simply cedes spending authority to the executive branch.

He acknowledged in a floor speech Monday that he was “not wild” about the ban, but said the “only way” to turn the corner on spending would be to make “difficult decisions.”

McConnell refused to apologize for his own earmarks. "Make no mistake, I know the good that has come from the projects I have helped support throughout my state," he said. 

“I’m not wild about turning over more spending authority to the executive branch," McConnell added. 

The Senate GOP conference is expected to hold a vote Tuesday on DeMint's voluntary ban.

Maybe This Is A Big Deal For The Kids

Today the Wall Street Journal reported that Steve Jobs is nearing the end of his long and winding pursuit of the Beatles catalog. Apple is about to announce that iTunes will finally be selling Beatles music.

Even as recorded-music sales have plummeted, the Beatles have remained one of the most reliable franchises in the business. In 2009, 39 years after breaking up, they sold the third-highest number of albums of any act in the U.S., according to Nielsen SoundScan, with 3.3 million copies sold.

In the past decade, the Beatles sold the second-highest number of albums of any artist (trailing Eminem by 2 million units), and the second-highest number of albums since SoundScan launched in 1991 (Garth Brooks has sold more), according to SoundScan.

The only significant holdouts left not selling through iTunes are Metallica, Led Zeppelin, Radiohead, and Tool.

I Found A Mistake In Markos' New Book

I'm loving American Taliban and I ration a few pages a day so I can stretch it out. And today I found a mistake. Markos was expanding on the assertion that "The American Taliban's longstanding attitude is that women who wear revealing clothes or unmarried women who have sex deserve the consequences of sexual assault, rape, sexually transmitted diseases, AIDS, etc." That's all perfectly true and well reflected in the attitude towards women in both Afghanistan and Alabama. But then Markos let his guard down for a moment to make a point:

Unlike Muslim extremists who want to stone or give public lashings to women who sexually misbehave, our American fundamentalists simply want to let them die.

This is partially true of the American Taliban-- but not for the hardest of the hard core. Take newly elected Florida psychopath Daniel Webster. This fringe maniac is a devout follower of cult fanatic Bill Gothard whose crackpot "religion" specifically does call for stoning-- and stoning to death-- women who misbehave. Let me throw in some B.E. Wilson:

As I've detailed in a recent Alternet story, Daniel Webster's intimate, over three decade long involvement with evangelist Bill Gothard appears similar to a classic guru-disciple or mentor-pupil relationship and has included speaking multiple times at Gothard's conferences, traveling with Gothard to Korea in 1996, using Bill Gothard's material to homeschool his six children, making an instructional video for Gothard's Institute For Basic Life Principles, and, when Webster became speaker of the Florida legislature in 1996, hiring four of Gothard's IBLP employees as high-level Florida State House staffers.

As I describe in my Alternet story, Alan Grayson's GOP Opponent Directly Tied to Christian Group That Wants Permanent Subordination of Women, according to the Vice President of the Chalcedon Institute, before the institute's founder, father of Christian Reconstructionism R.J. Rushdoony, died, Rushdoony nearly struck a deal with Gothard that would have allowed him to distribute Rushdoony's Institutes of Biblical Law book, a template for implementing Biblical law in government.

Rushdoony was a virulently racist Holocaust denier who believed in Geocentrism, the proposition that the Sun, and all the heavens, rotate around the Earth, which is the center of creation.

Although the deal fell through because the two men held clashing positions about divorce (Gothard wanted to ban it altogether) they otherwise were in agreement including, apparently, on R.J. Rushdoony's vision of instituting stoning as a form of capital punishment for murder, adultery, homosexuality, idolatry, apostasy, and witchcraft.  
 
Asked about his 1996 trip to Korea with Bill Gothard, Daniel Webster told the Florida Gainesville Sun, for an August 5th, 1996 story, "I respect (Gothard) as much as anybody. I wouldn't have gone [with Gothard to Korea] but he wanted me there."

Interviewed for a February 16, 1997 story from the Florida newspaper the St. Petersburg Times, Webster stated, on Gothard, "I enjoy the advice he's given. I think it's been a major part of my life. I'm not ashamed of that. What he has said I believe to be the truth."

You see why the new congressman from Orlando is called "Taliban Dan?"

And Ole Steny...


He wasn't just the go-to-guy for the Blue Dogs, particularly the Blue Dogs who voted more frequently with the Republicans than with their own party. Now we find out, courtesy of another member of the Wall Street fraternity, that Steny is the Republicans' favorite Democrat too-- and not just because he and Boehner would rather be golfing. "Steny," says Ryan, "talks to us." Yeah, I bet he does.

Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wis.), the incoming chairman of the House Budget Committee, suggested Republicans get along best with Hoyer, the second-ranking House Democrat who will stay in the No. 2 position in the next Congress.

"I get along pretty well with Steny. He's the only one we really talk to," Ryan said Monday morning on CNBC. "I don't know Nancy Pelosi. I had a 30-second conversation with her about six years ago, and that's about it."

...The Maryland Democrat is seen as an emissary to centrist Democrats in the House. And the incoming Republican majority, Ryan suggested, might see Hoyer as a better option for outreach compared to Pelosi, who will stay on as Democratic leader.

Will Next Tuesday Be More Like The 1934 Midterms Or The November, 1933 German Elections?

When the Great Depression started taking its toll on our country in the late '20s and early '30s, it was also devastating the rest of the world. Over the previous decade, the elites had made their move towards a kind of feudalism in which they owned everything and everyone else would get by on their table scraps. The U.S. combated that by turning the political party that supported those elites-- the Republicans-- out of office. In 1928, with ineffectual, business-oriented Herbert Hoover as president, the Republicans held 56 seats in the Senate and the Democrats only 39. In the House, there were 270 Republicans and 164 Democrats. Then came the Crash of 1929. In the 1930 midterms, a week after the Crash, Republicans lost 8 seats in the Senate, giving the Democrats a 1 vote majority. In the House the Republicans lost 52 seats, retaining a razor-thin majority, which was wiped away between November and January when several Republicans died and Democrats won in special elections. In 1932, FDR defeated Hoover and the GOP lost a dozen more Senate seats and a startling 101 House seats. When Congress convened in January there were 313 Democrats and 117 Republicans. The Republicans yelled and screamed about "socialism" and tried obstructing everything. The voters responded in the 1934 midterms by defeating 14 more Republicans in the House and ten more in the Senate. By the time Roosevelt was reelected to his second term in 1936, the GOP had sunk to 16 Senate seats and 88 House seats (to the Democrats' 334). That's how Americans responded to obstructionism in the face of FDR's roll-up-our-sleeves-and-get-to-work approach to saving the country.

From the outset, the Republican legislative strategy has been to reject any hint of compromise in favor of making unprecedentedly ruthless use of Senate filibusters and threats of filibusters in order to thwart or weaken everything the Democrats seek to do, the better to attack them for lack of accomplishment. In this way, four hundred and twenty bills passed by the House (which is fifty-nine-per-cent Democratic) have died in the Senate (also fifty-nine-per-cent Democratic). Even among the small minority of voters who have some familiarity with Senate rules and their baneful consequences, few know that the Democrats had their filibuster-proof majority-- sixty votes, not all of them reliable-- for just seven of the Obama Administration’s twenty-one months. Under the circumstances, the record is impressive: a health-care program that will cover twenty million of the uninsured while restraining costs; partial reform of the financial industry; the rescue of the American auto industry, saving a million jobs; and a fiscal stimulus-- $814 billion of tax cuts, infrastructure projects, and help for states and cities-- without which, according to the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office, today’s unemployment rate would be pushing twelve per cent.

But, as Krugman implied in a column last week, Obama is tepid and inexperienced and has been a disappointing, pale shadow of FDR. And today we're quite a different electorate and, apparently, about to head into a situation more akin to what happened in Germany than what happened here at home in those dark days.

Hitler was never elected president of Germany, though he ran in 1932, polling 36.8% against Paul von Hindenberg's 53%. The Nazi's had already polled 18.3% in the parliamentary elections in 1930, increased that to 37.4% in July of 1932 and then saw that decrease to 33.1% 4 months later, in both cases with the inclination-- and the ability-- to obstruct everything the government tried to do to combat the effects of the then raging Great Depression. In 1933, feeling bullied, frustrated and hopeless, the power elites in Germany decided to give Hitler a chance to govern and appointed him Chancellor (head of the government). After Hitler was appointed there was one more election, in March of 1933, before Hitler just abolished them as an anachronism. The Nazis didn't even win that one, coming in with 43.9% of the vote, even with the extraordinary incident of the Reichstag having been burnt down the previous month. (That was used by Hitler as an excuse to suspend human rights, end the separation of powers between the executive and legislative branch, allow preventive detention, and eliminate the Communists, and soon after the Socialists as legal political parties.) The Germans saw their constitutional guarantees just slip away.

You may know about Godwin's "law" which says if you talk about Nazis online, you automatically lose the argument. Yesterday the crooked and detestable right-wing Democrat running for governor of Rhode Island, Frank Caprio, told Obama-- in regard to a non-endorsement-- to shove it. Michael Godwin can do the same. The Republicans are Nazis. In fact... even worse than Godwin's rule about not calling rightists Nazis, is a similar ban by The Village on calling dangerous, violent, right-wing religious fanatics the American Taliban. But that is very much what we face going into next week's elections.

Or do you not see the relation between Sharron Angle's "Second Amendment remedies," Joe Miller's private thugs roughing up journalists, Daniel Webster's religious cult calling for the stoning of disobedient women and gays (stoning to death, I might add), right-wing attacks on Raul Grijalva's office (the latest with toxic chemical agents meant to kill staffers), Republicans' incessant demands that the Constitution be altered in ways they prefer, Boehner's "Hell, No" obstructionism to economic salvation for the country, Rich Iott's glorification and emulation of SS death squads, physically violence towards women from top tier GOP candidates like David Rivera and Tom Ganley, and Monday evening's ugly "altercation," as Rand Paul put it in defending his fascist supporters, "between supporters of both sides?" If America votes in the Republicans next week, it's one giant step-- perhaps an irreversible one-- towards what the German's allowed to happen to them in 1933.

Gay Conservatives Coming Out? Well... Maybe Joe Blow But Not Aaron Schock Or Patrick McHenry... Or Even David Dreier

Guess who didn't get mentioned in The Advocate's story on conservative closet cases coming out?

Normally, when we think of "gay Republicans" we think of pathological closet cases whose very lives are psychologically debilitating hellish lies. From former Maryland Congressman (and American Conservative Union founder and president) Bob Bauman in his 1986 book about being outed and abandoned by his rightist allies to the more incident in California with state Senator Roy Ashburn the lesson Republicans should be learning is "closets are for clothes," not for dignified human beings. It's virtually impossible to live a worthwhile life as a closet case. Examples include not only recently out wrecks and wretches like Mark Foley (R-FL), Larry Craig (R-ID), Jim West (R-WA) and Ed Schrock (R-VA) and half-in-half-out closet queens like Lindsey Graham (R-SC), Miss McConnell (R-KY) and David Dreier (R-CA) but also hysterically furtive night-prowlers Mark Kirk (R-IL), Aaron Schock (R-IL), Patrick McHenry (R-NC), Adrian Smith (R-NE), and Trent Franks (R-AZ). But, the new issue of the Advocate wants us to know that there's a new breed of conservative Republican gays who are stepping out of the closet.

You've probably never heard of any of them... other than maybe Ken Mehlman, who was outed while plotting the Bush campaign's divisive, hate-filled and ruthless anti-gay strategies. It's mostly about recently uncloseted minor gay staffers in DC, approximately 2/3 of the city's temporary residents. It's a story "of a growing number of Republicans who hope young conservatives no longer feel the need to hide their sexual identity in order to pursue their passion for politics. Their stories vary wildly: Some came out in protest of what they see as a political ethos that fundamentally rejects their humanity, while others say they aren’t so troubled when their professional obligations seem, to others at least, at odds with their sexual orientation. But most believe the unprecedented support of conservative icons such as George W. Bush’s former solicitor general Ted Olson, currently litigating the federal case against California’s antigay Proposition 8, and the recent openness of high-profile operatives like onetime Republican National Committee chairman Ken Mehlman can help motivate aspiring young gays-- and perhaps reshape the national conversation in the process."

If you're hoping Kerry Eleveld actually unlocks the conservative closet... well, you might as well skip the Advocate altogether and stick with the magazine's bulkier fashion/booze-recipes-and-gossip-oriented sister publication, Out. One gay GOP operative, Dan Gurley, was so outraged ("gut-punched," he recalls) when Bush decided to try to pass a Constitutional Amendment to outlaw gay marriage that he adamantly refused to hang a life-size photo of Bush in his office "for months." Now, "in retrospect, Gurley acknowledges that he could have made more of a difference if he’d been out to his RNC colleagues. 'It might have given a heightened sense of awareness to others if everyone had known, rather than some knowing and others not knowing,” he says." You think?

Markos Moulitsas' brilliant new book, American Taliban has a chapter he probably designed to make right-wingers, gay and straight, squirm. It's called "Sex," and I suspect many of the reviewers only read this chapter. "While the lust for power and the flirtation with violence are definitely traits of the American Taliban," he begins, "what really gets their panties in a twist is sex." He could just as well be writing a biographical sketch of Daniel Webster (AKA- "Taliban Dan"), the fanatic, sex-obsessed career politician running against Alan Grayson in the Orlando area of central Florida.

Unlike power and violence, sex is something they are obsessed with avoiding. This creates a paradox: they are so fearful of the pleasures of the flesh that they can't stop talking about them. Or, as we'll see, often indulging in them. Hence they've created an entire regressive moral code, dressed it up as "family values," and set out to violate almost every one of its tenets. All this repression ultimately screws them up in the head.

...Both Christianity and Islam consider homosexuality immoral. Indeed, same-sex relations are illegal in most Muslim countries [though widely practiced], generally punishable by jail time or corporal punishment, and the more extreme the regime, the more brutal the punishment.

In the extremist cult Taliban Dan ascribes to, led by multimillionaire charlatan Bill Gothard (Webster's top advisor) you couldn't get more extreme. Closeted or not, he decrees that all gay men and women should be stoned... to death. But you can kind of see why people growing up in this kind of depraved milieu might chose to bolt that closet door from the inside-- and barricade it shut.

Meet Jamie; she survived Bill Gothard and, unlike Taliban Dan, she broke free:

Rand Paul Is Offended, Joe Miller Is Offensive

Barbara Boxer's first ad defining Carly Fiorina-- watch it if you haven't seen it yet-- was devastating for the failed business executive running for the Senate. Boxer's polling numbers started climbing from the day the ad was released. It was tough and stark and clear as a bell-- targeted exactly to what California voters are worrying about when they think of Republicans getting their hands on the levers of power again. Over the weekend, Boxer released another, obviously made by the same company, and even more powerful. Neither ad is playing footsie with these fascists.

"Oh, don't call them fascists," pantywaist hand-wringers and pearl clutchers whine. These are also the craven self-styled adults who bemoaned the "mean-spiritedness" of Markos' insightful and brilliant new book, American Taliban and Alan Grayson's stark ads about the religionist crackpot he's running against, Daniel "Taliban Dan" Webster, who the mass media has tried to paint as a mainstream conservative but who is actually far more radical and extreme than even Sarah Palin, Christine O'Donnell, Carly Fiorina, Rand Paul, Ken Buck, Pat Toomey or Sharron Angle. (I left Joe Miller out for a reason and we'll get back to him shortly.) Friday night I went to the filming of Bill Maher's TV show because Markos was a guest. I was reluctant to go because Maher, the creator of the great documentary religionism takedown, Religulous, had made a craven, boneheaded remark about Grayson's Taliban Dan ad that showed a disturbing lack of comprehension and/or attention-- and on the part of someone who fancies himself a social commentator. I had a feeling he would also ambush Markos. And he did. It was completed obvious that the distracted Maher-- sexy girlfriend-- hadn't bothered to read Markos' well documented book he decided to savage.

Digby's kept a steady commentary up on these smelling salt users for some time and she hit it out of the ballpark yesterday.

Rand Paul, the pot smoking libertarian Tea Partier is now rending his garments like a typical social conservative Christian and condemning Jack Conway for being insensitive to his religion. (And once again the liberal intelligentsia is abandoning Conway because he's made an ad that they feel in "inappropriate.")

The fact is that Rand Paul, once a hardcore libertarian, condemned religion and certainly didn't believe in social conservatism. Tens of thousands of libertarians sent him money just this year believing that's the kind of Tea Partier he was. Now, like the rest of them he's changed his tune and he's become a Church Lady Bible thumper, excoriating Conway for saying the word "hell" at a political picnic. This is a bullshit game and Conway has every right to call him out as a hypocrite.

This race in Kentucky is a vicious dogfight that very possibly may end up being the only chance the Democrats have to hold the Senate. The Teabaggers and other right wing deviants are running disgusting ads all over the country ripping Democrats to shreds and appealing to basest instincts of the voters.

...But the good news is that if we can help Rand Paul drag down Conway and give the villagers an "even the liberals" narrative for Paul to use as his sanctimonious fainting couch, at least on the morning after the election, when the US Congress is taken over by antediluvian throwbacks, we'll all be able to say that we didn't stoop to their level. I'm sure that will be very comforting.

When this new progressive movement started, one of its tenets was that if progressive candidates would take risks, would be aggressive against the Republicans, would shake up the establishment and stop being the milquetoast campaigners that had turned the Democratic party into an embarrassment-- we would get their backs. Some of them believed us and they went outside the normal cautious "don't make trouble" approach and came out swinging. It's risky, and sometimes it misses. But taking risks is what we asked them to do and that's what we signed up for.

We have two weeks to go and some of these races are very, very tight. They may all lose, some might win, we just don't know. This is an ugly election-- one of the worst I've ever seen-- financed by billionaires who are very happy to let the GOP run completely wild as long as it takes care of the owners. But it isn't ugly because the Democrats have been hurling mud. It's ugly because this ugly political movement is fighting as dirty as candidates can fight. Some Democrats aren't rolling over and playing dead. The least we can do is have their backs as we promised we would.

Joe Miller & Rand Paul have you in mind-- and your family

Sunday night, during a town hall in Anchorage, crooked Tea Party thug Joe Miller-- who has already announced he will not be answering any questions about his shady background-- had members of his private militia attack and kidnap, Tony Hopfinger, a journalist who asked him some embarrassing questions. Do you think any conservatives have come out and chastised Miller? Let me know if you find any. After all, Miller's professed love of the Constitution is just a talking point, nothing something he or his followers take seriously.

The Senate race in Alaska is a three-way neck-and-neck scramble between Democrat Scott McAdams, Miller and conservative Republican sore loser Lisa Murkowski. If she were to drop out, McAdams would win a sweeping victory. Unfortunately, her colossal ego is keeping her in a race that splits the sane people on one side and the insane people on the other (Miller's). This could end badly. If you'd like to help McAdams in the final round, you can do it here, same place you can help Jack Conway fight back against Rand Paul.

If teabaggers like Joe Miller, Sharron Angle, Ron Johnson, Rand Paul, Pat Toomey and Ken Buck (and don't forget rightist Florida thug Allen West) are elected in two weeks, our country will be one step closer to this, the Republican vision of "freedom" and "liberty":

Is Totalitarianism A Threat To Our Country? The Religious Kind?

Aside from the sheer majestic beauty of the place-- and the primitiveness of the life-- there weren't many "tourist attractions" in Afghanistan, one of the most fascinating countries I've ever visited. One was the Shrine of Hazrat Ali (the fabulous Blue Mosque of Mazar-i-Sharif) way up north, and the other was the giant 1,500-year-old carved buddhas in the Bamian Valley north of Kabul. Religious intolerance on a sociopathic scale has disposed of the latter, although so far the former hasn't been damaged by the same mentality. Just wait.

I've never had an actual religion. My dad was a dedicated atheist, the thing I admired most about him. I studied religions in college, and wound up fooling around with Buddhism for a good long time. When I came back to Europe from a two-year sojourn on the Indian subcontinent, I spent four years working in de Kosmos, Amsterdam's sprawling, nonsectarian meditation center. Of all the belief systems I came across there, the one that had the most appeal to me was a pantheistic, ascetic, mystical offshoot of Islam: Sufism. It's the closest I ever came to "having a religion." I was thrilled many years later when I went to the annual Sufi hoedown in Konya, Turkey, and experienced the real deal dervish dancing and then visited Rumi's tomb. It was moving, but not really a religious experience for me.

Nevertheless, last week when I read about the senseless bombing of a Sufi shrine-- where spiritually minded Sunnis and Shi'a both went to practice devotions-- in Karachi, I was mortified. Sufism is a beautiful, poetic, contemplative, open faith that is neither aggressive nor holier-than-thou. Fundamentalists and totalitarians just cannot countenance it. Nine worshippers were killed and over 70 injured, many very seriously. The Pakistani Taliban claimed responsibility for the suicide bombing. They don't believe in shrines or saints; they believe they're a kind of blasphemy, in fact.

So what does this have to do with the congressional race in Orlando, Florida? I'm glad you asked, but let's not jump ahead of ourselves. Instead, let's turn to Markos Moulitsas' brilliant and provocative new book, American Taliban. As you know, conservatives never tire of puffing themselves up and yammering-- when not shrieking-- about "freedom" and "liberty." Alas, theirs is the "freedom" of the rich and powerful to degrade and exploit the poor and vulnerable and the "liberty" of sociopaths and narcissists to prey on society. Right in the beginning of his book, Markos establishes the clear lines that bind the Muslim Taliban to what can be called the religious fanatics and extremists in this country known as the American Taliban.

This "freedom" they all claim to seek is, to put it mildly, a limited one: freedom to worship their god and subscribe to their ideology, not freedom to live one's life as one sees fit. At its core is the idea that all laws of the land must flow from their holy book, and that all else is deviation that must be banned.

Holding such beliefs is fine, but foisting them on the rest of us is not. Filled with a moral certitude born of religious conviction, these fundamentalists want a society in which "freedom" means being free to submit to their god. "When the Christian majority takes over this country, there will be no satanic churches, no more free distribution of pornography, no more talk of rights for homosexuals," thundered Gary Potter, president of Catholics for Christian Political Action. "After the Christian majority takes control, pluralism will be seen as immoral and evil, and the state will not permit anybody the right to practice evil."... Totalitarianism for Christ.

This level of intolerance is not the domain of loons and fringe characters but rather the very lifeblood coursing through the entire body of the modern conservative movement.

...The American Taliban's ideology-- with its rigid conformity and lack of tolerance for dissent-- extends far beyond biblical matters and spills over into areas of domestic and foreign policy... Their approach to life is angry and vengeful, and they cling desperately to scriptural certainty in a tumultuous world...

Such certainty, manifested merely as intolerance, would be problematic but not dangerous. However, the American Taliban, like their Islamic extremist brethren across the globe seek to force their rigid views on the rest of society. Such totalitarianism is incompatible with freedom and democracy... In essence, god's law supersedes man's law, and any institution designed to provide for secular governance is by nature illegitimate.

..."I want you to just let a wave of intolerance wash over you," said Randall Terry, founder of the militant anti-abortion protest group Operation Rescue in 1993. "I want you to let a wave of hatred wash over you. Yes, hate is good... Our goal is a Christian nation. We have a biblical duty, we are called by God, to conquer this country. We don't want equal time. We don't want pluralism."

...The American Taliban seek a tyranny of the believers in which the popular will, the laws of the land, and all of secular society are surrendered to their clerics and ideologues.

And if this describes your world view, you probably shouldn't be reading DWT; you should be down in Orlando working for a politician running as the representative of the American Taliban, Daniel Webster, aka Taliban Dan.

Webster, a devotee and lockstep follower of millionaire extremist and religionist charlatan Bill Gothard, has sought, as a member of the Florida legislature, to institute his narrow and extreme ideology as the law of the land, not just for fellow devotees, but for everyone. Ask yourself, "When is it okay for a man to cheat on his wife?" and the answer is: in a law that Taliban Dan wrote and then tried, unsuccessfully, to pass in Florida. Alan Grayson's campaign brought another example of Webster's hypocrisy to light this week, pointing out that Webster tried to make it the law of Florida that a woman who cheats on her husband cannot receive alimony, but a husband who cheats can.

The “Men Can Cheat” caveat is part of Webster’s now-infamous “Covenant Marriage” bill. Not surprisingly, Webster wrote the bill in a way to allow the hypocritical idea to go virtually unnoticed. The short sentence appears near the end of the bill. It says, “No alimony shall be granted to an adulterous wife.”

The bill does not include any mention of penalties for a cheating husband. A review of state law shows that men were entitled to alimony in 1990. Therefore, one can only conclude that Daniel Webster worded his bill carefully to ensure that cheating women are penalized, and cheating husbands are not.

On the other hand, if all this religious bickering is something you don't want to deal with... here's a nice song about raising highway tolls you might enjoy which comes from the same mentality:

Taliban Dan Has A Point Of View On Women's Issues-- It's Toxic

A friend of mine, a distinguished author, has a new book out and he was invited to be a guest on Bill Maher's TV show. His book is about the dangers inherent in the new breed of America's far right. The book is available at the DWT bookstore and I hope you'll buy it. It's called American Taliban and it may be a tiny bit abstract for some people who might be better off just reading David Broder columns in the Washington Post instead. Anyway, the distinguished author invited me to come along to the show and I want to go to be supportive of him and, although I don't get HBO at home, I'll always appreciate Bill Maher for how he helped us all to understand exactly who Arkansas Senator Mark Pryor is. But the other day Maher jumped on the Village bandwagon which has been pulled along by John Stewart and Anderson Cooper, the former uncharacteristically intellectually sluggish and the latter very much characteristically intellectually sluggish. I've sworn off Stewart's show for the remainder of the election cycle and I always opt for the emotionally and intellectually void HGTV over Cooper anyway.

Each joined in on the attack against Alan Grayson because you just NO DONT SAY another fine American is Taliban. You don't? I do. Daniel Webster is part of the American Taliban and he and they are a danger to America-- a very, very real danger, probably ten times more dangerous than the actual Afghanistan Taliban (not counting the clear and present danger to the U.S. troops occupying their country). That's why we call him Taliban Dan. It doesn't mean he has one eye like Mullah Omar or that he dresses like an Af or uses the Pashtunwali code of honor. Like I said, sometimes things are a tiny bit more abstract. Just a tiny bit.

Although a sharp cookie like Ed Schultz had no problem understanding the point, Grayson decided to make it easier for John Stewart, Bill Maher, Anderson Cooper-- good luck-- and The Villagers in general. He even had the sages at Politifact and FactCheck.org give the new, less abstract ad their blessing in advance. The ad is up top and these are the facts:

FACT: Daniel Webster "would force victims of rape and incest to bear their attacker's child.”

FACT: Daniel Webster “sponsored a bill to create a form of marriage that would trap women in abusive relationships."  

FACT: Daniel Webster "is an advocate for a group that teaches that mothers should not work outside the home."

Watch as Webster tries repeatedly to dodge questions about his horrible record on women’s issues. 

Since the new ad began airing this week, Daniel Webster has flat-out refused to be interviewed by reporters on multiple occasions.

“Career politician Daniel Webster hopes that if he closes his eyes to his own awful record, it will go away. Well, it won't. Now we know why Webster hesitated so long to run for Congress-- even Webster himself can't defend what he has done during his 28 years in office. Webster thinks that if he stays silent on his record, no one else will say anything either, and reporters and voters will quit asking about it.  What an insult,” said Congressman Grayson.

I'm going to go to Maher's show next week and, if I get the opportunity, I'll try to talk with him about why he messed up so badly when it came to the Taliban Dan ad. Meanwhile, let's keep up our efforts to get Grayson's back because there are only two possible results on November 3-- either America's best congressman is still in office or we have a member of the American Taliban representing Orlando, Florida, trying to figure out how to legislate his extremist religious views-- like stoning disobedient women and children (and obedient gays)-- just like he tried doing when he was in the Florida legislature.

Meanwhile, the National Organization for Women (NOW) endorsed Alan Grayson for reelection today, calling him a champion for women's issues and reminding voters that Daniel Webster "would significantly delay or turn back women's advancement if elected" and that he has a long history of fighting against women's issues.

Webster, who was a member of the Florida Legislature for 28 years, sponsored a bill in 1990 that would have established covenant marriage and prevented divorce for people married under the program except in cases of adultery. He also voted against legislation to prevent health insurers from considering domestic violence to be a preexisting condition.

In the 1990s, Webster reportedly said he opposed abortion in all cases including those involving incest and rape.

"We'll be set back 20 years if he's elected," Slutiak said.

More like 2,000 years! Isn't that when they were into the idea of stony disobedient women, still advocated by Webster's guru, Bill Gothard.

Why Do They Call Daniel Webster "Taliban Dan?" Is It Fair?

More than a few progressives have questioned the wisdom and "the fairness" of Alan Grayson's Taliban Dan ad... and some Villagers have been positively gleeful in clobbering Grayson for his tactics. But as we've been pointing out since the advent of the firestorm, even if the portrayal was a little clumsy, it was never less than completely accurate. In fact, it's impossible in a 30 second ad to explain the full degree to which Webster ascribes to-- and has acted in a manner consistent with-- the worst tenets of religionist fundamentalism that would be more at home in backward areas of Afghanistan than in Orlando... or even Kabul. Yesterday TPM did the full report that Florida media has been to lazy--- or too biased-- to bother with. As they point out, Webster's been with Bill Gothard's religious cult, the Institute for Basic Life Principles, for decades and publicly admits to being a staunch supporter and follower. An ex-member of the cult Vyckie Garrison, watched the ad and explained to TPM that Grayson's ad hit the nail right on the head. "I watched that ad, that video that the Grayson guy...and after I watched it, I thought, yeah, that's definitely provocative, but I don't think that's an exaggeration to compare Dan Webster and IBPL ideals to the Taliban because, as far as women go, we are reduced to non-personhood status." Garrison divorced her husband and left the cult when one of her daughters attempted to commit suicide. She now blogs about Gothard's dangerous cult-- to which Webster (as well as Mike Huckabee are both devoted) at No Longer Quivering.

What we now call IBLP was founded decades by Bill Gothard, an influential, and deeply conservative minister. In a Time Magazine article written over 30 years ago, Gothard, then 39, was quoted as advising women, attacked by their husbands, to pray, "God, thank you for this beating." His group has existed in different forms, until it was finally incorporated as IBLP about 20 years ago.

According to Garrison, IBLP gets its hooks into evangelical parents by offering them a program for home schooling their children, to protect them from the evils of public schools-- "Satan's indoctrination centers." (Webster's six children have all been home schooled.)

"The next thing we heard was to trust the Lord with our home planning," Garrison said.

They pretty much pushed in IBLP the primary ideal is that you will not use birth control, that you will accept all the blessings the Lord sends your way. There's all these code words, but basically what they're saying is women should not use birth control for any reason. In my case I had a lot of health reasons, it was recommended to me after my third that I not have any more kids-- I'd had a C-section-- but once I got into this whole teaching, I felt that I was going against Scripture by not allowing the Lord to bless me and I needed to trust that if he was going to give me a baby he'd protect me."

So Garrison had four more children.

Those children, and Garrison herself, wound up in a position of complete subservience. Whether Webster preached it directly or not, the Institute teaches that women should indeed submit themselves to their husbands.

"There's a big emphasis on this authority structure within Gothardism and the whole IBLP. If you're submitting to him that's how you obey God, that's how you gain physical, spiritual, financial protection, is being basically obedient to the spiritual head, which would be your husband, or if you're a child, your father," Garrison told me. "Being in submission, that's how you're going to keep the devil from ruining your life."

"The main trouble for us was there's such a focus on this patriarchal teaching, that the husband is the head, he is the leader, the wife is to submit, the children are to obey," she described. "And it gives so much authority and power to the man that it turned my husband into just a tyrant. He had the idea in his head that as our spiritual covering he had a responsibility for my spiritual life, our children's spiritual life. And if he feels like he's the one who's ultimately going to answer to God, he has the authority and the responsibility and the obligation to use so much control over all our actions, down to our thoughts and beliefs."

Kathryn Joyce, an expert on Gothardism and similar lifestyles, estimates that tens of thousands of people in the country live their lives this way. The movement is known as the Quiverfull movement, because, as Garrison put it, "children are arrows in the hands of the holy man." Adherents believe themselves to be in a "battle for the Kingdom of Righteousness, and you want to have as many arrows in your quiver as you can and you want them to be sharp, you want them to be focused...you are raising up an army for God."

I asked Garrison whether it would be possible to be a member of IBLP and not adhere to the patriarchal aspects of its teachings.

"No," she insisted. "It's one of the foundational principals. It's what gets you into it. There's the whole thing: This is what a godly woman looks like. There's very clearly delineated roles for women, and those roles are all based on submission, they're based on self denial, on obedience, and respect, and even the word respect translates into 'you just take it, and with a smile.' Because that's how God would have you respond to tyranny and abuse."

Does it sound something like the Sharia Law of fundamentalist Muslims? It should-- because it is, "with strict instructions on how to dress, date, and run a home, and with strict consequences for disobedience." According to Gothard, "Once they are married, the husband 'gives the law' and the wife 'works out the proper procedure to carry it out.' Equal authority in marriage is 'Satan's goal.' The key to a happy marriage is 'the wife's submission and the husband's sacrifice'."

As I've detailed in a recent Alternet story, Daniel Webster's intimate, over three decade long involvement with evangelist Bill Gothard appears similar to a classic guru-disciple or mentor-pupil relationship and has included speaking multiple times at Gothard's conferences, traveling with Gothard to Korea in 1996, using Bill Gothard's material to homeschool his six children, making an instructional video for Gothard's Institute For Basic Life Principles, and, when Webster became speaker of the Florida legislature in 1996, hiring four of Gothard's IBLP employees as high-level Florida State House staffers.

As I describe in my Alternet story, Alan Grayson's GOP Opponent Directly Tied to Christian Group That Wants Permanent Subordination of Women, according to the Vice President of the Chalcedon Institute, before the institute's founder, father of Christian Reconstructionism R.J. Rushdoony, died, Rushdoony nearly struck a deal with Gothard that would have allowed him to distribute Rushdoony's Institutes of Biblical Law book, a template for implementing Biblical law in government.

Rushdoony was a virulently racist Holocaust denier who believed in Geocentrism, the proposition that the Sun, and all the heavens, rotate around the Earth, which is the center of creation.

Although the deal fell through because the two men held clashing positions about divorce (Gothard wanted to ban it altogether) they otherwise were in agreement including, apparently, on R.J. Rushdoony's vision of instituting stoning as a form of capital punishment for murder, adultery, homosexuality, idolatry, apostasy, and witchcraft.  
 
Asked about his 1996 trip to Korea with Bill Gothard, Daniel Webster told the Florida Gainesville Sun, for an August 5th, 1996 story, "I respect (Gothard) as much as anybody. I wouldn't have gone [with Gothard to Korea] but he wanted me there."

Interviewed for a February 16, 1997 story from the Florida newspaper the St. Petersburg Times, Webster stated, on Gothard, "I enjoy the advice he's given. I think it's been a major part of my life. I'm not ashamed of that. What he has said I believe to be the truth."

...As I describe in Alan Grayson's GOP Opponent Directly Tied to Christian Group That Wants Permanent Subordination of Women, other notable teachings [aside from female submission and obedience] and practices of Bill Gothard include,

• The claim that schizophrenia is merely a form of "irresponsibility."

• The need for believers to submit to all forms of authority, which is put in place by God.

•  As charged by several conservative Christian critics, the claim that Cabbage Patch and troll dolls are evil and inhibit childbirth.

• As charged by author Cora Anika Theill, the claim that rebellious wives can be 'cured' by casting out spirits of 'rebellion.'

• The doctrine that rock music is demonic and can cause possession by evil spirits.

Gothard and Huckabee and Webster are all entitled to their religious beliefs-- as long as they don't rape minors-- but the danger to society is when their primitive, self-serving beliefs are inserted into the political system by members like Webster who stealthily manage to get into official positions and attempt to use the underlying tenets of the cult in crafting legislation. One of the Founding Fathers' greatest gifts to our country was a wall they built-- a wall between church and state. Otherwise, we'd be just as screwed up as... well, the Taliban.

Is It Fair For Liberals To Call Him "Taliban Dan?"

I had a call today from a trustworthy ally asking me why we're not supporting the reelection of the most endangered Democratic House incumbent, Tom Perriello, someone we helped get elected in 2008. I don't want to go into this in any great detail-- since I have before-- other than to say he got Blue America to endorse him by specifically and unambiguously lying to us about protecting women's right to choice. That's a bright red line in the sand-- bright blue line?-- that progressives just cannot get around. If women don't have control over their own bodies, there is no chance for Democracy to thrive. And that's exactly what conservative patriarchal ideologues are aiming for. And that brings us to... Taliban Dan down in Orlando. Digby has been writing quite a lot about him, just today, in fact, here and here. (Actually that second "here" refers to Taliban Dan's dangerous and radical mentor, Bill Gothard and we'll get to him very soon.)

Group Think Inside-the-Beltway among "liberal" pundits and would-be Broders-- quotations around liberal because, of course, a blue team shirt doesn't really mean "liberal" anywhere but... Inside-the-Beltway-- tell us that protecting Perriello (who lied and betrayed women by voting for the Stupak Amendment and who boasts an overall ProgressPunch score of a very dismal 47.11, just fractionally above Blue Dog elder Gene Taylor, the Mississippi Dixiecrat who called for the ouster of Nancy Pelosi as Speak this week) is a "must." And this same Group Think is mortified, just mortified, that Alan Grayson called out Taliban Dan for his extremist views on women's rights, views that would be more at home in the most backwards reaches of Afghanistan than in Orlando-- or even Kabul! "Women's issues" don't seem to mean much to these fellas. Never does.

But they sure are worked up that FactCheck.org, a tenuous source of "truth" in the best of times, attacked Grayson's Taliban Dan ad as less than factual. Let's start with a powerful rebuttal from a far more trustworthy and authoritative source, Sarah Posner, author of God’s Profits: Faith, Fraud, and the Republican Crusade for Values Voters, and an associate editor of Religion Dispatches. She points out that FactCheck's point was that the Taliban Dan quotes in Grayson's ad were taken out of context. But FactCheck botched it.

Grayson's campaign argued that Webster seemed to be supporting submission in his comments to an audience of conservative men, whom he directed to pray that they would better fulfill their biblical duty to love their wives, and leave prayers about women's submission to their wives. However, the emphasis of these remarks, as those familiar with Christian rhetoric could recognize, is not on the optional nature of wives' submission. Wifely submission is part of an often-unbalanced equation to Christians who subscribe to "complementarian" or "patriarchal" marriage roles, where men must "love" and women "obey." Saying that a woman should pray for God's guidance in submission, if she wants to, is not leniency, but rather standard evangelical language that emphasizes individuals must obey biblical mandates regardless of how others around them behave. So, Webster is saying, men must be accountable to God for their responsibility to love their wives regardless of whether she submits-- that they must pray to do right, even if she doesn't. 

However, the much more relevant application of this principle on following God's orders despite your circumstances is on women. Submission is a contentious and tricky issue even within conservative evangelical churches. Most churches promoting submission make certain to couple demands for submissive wives with those for loving, servant-leader husbands. But at the end of the day, it's women who bear the brunt of the principle; their obligations are to God, not to a husband who may or may not keep his end of the contract. Accordingly, the message is impressed by countless women's ministries and leaders that women must continue submitting even when their husband doesn't show love, because they owe their obedience, above all, to God. In circles that take submission seriously-- as does any organization associated with Bill Gothard-- that's what wives' options really look like.

What's more, Factcheck.org fails in a much broader context to describe what the IBLP is really about, describing it as a "non-denominational Christian organization that runs programs and training sessions."

Sounds sweet, doesn't it? It isn't, as Time reported way back in 1974 in a feature, Religion: Obey Thy Husband:

It is a metaphor that infuriates both liberated women and spirited youth. God holds in his hands a hammer (symbolizing a husband). The husband/hammer bangs a chisel (representing the obedient wife) that "chips away the rough edges" to turn a diamond in the rough (a teenager) into a gem.

God to husband to wife to child. That is "God's chain of command," the most controversial of the "universal, underlying, nonoptional principles" of family life that are being proclaimed by the Rev. Bill Gothard, 39, to mass audiences in two dozen cities from Seattle to Philadelphia... Children must be totally obedient. A religious teenager, for example, should not attend a church college if atheistic parents order him not to. As for a man's wife, she "has to realize that God accomplishes his ultimate will through the decisions of the husband, even when the husband is wrong." Citing I Thessalonians 5:18 ("In every thing give thanks"), Gothard even advises a wife whose husband chastises her to say, "God, thank you for this beating."

...Besides following the chain of command in the family, Christians should also be obedient to their employers and their government, Gothard asserts. Only if an order from a parent, the state or a boss conflicts with God's explicit commandments may it be disobeyed. But first the Christian is supposed to follow six complex steps, beginning with an examination of his own bad attitudes.

Taliban Dan has every right in the world to his own peculiar, primitive religious beliefs. But he's running for the U.S. Congress. When he was in the Florida legislature he attempted to pass a bizarre and arcane Bible-inspired bill that would prevent women from divorcing abuse husbands. It failed, of course, but Taliban Dan is even more extreme now than he was back then. He has been on record as wanting to put his literal interpretation of the Bible into actual practice-- just the way the Taliban does in the areas of Pakistan and Afghanistan where they've managed to gain a foothold. Taliban Dan has admitted to the St. Petersburg Times that Gothard is "a major part of my life... What he has said I believe to be the truth."

But even if you're a Beltway Boy and would-be David Broder manly man aspirant, there's a reason you don't want Taliban Dan and other Republican fanatics like him getting a foothold in our government. You see, it isn't just women they hate. They also hate working people. Here are a couple of Bronze Age passages they take quite literally and think should be part of the American legal system:

Peter 2:18 "Slaves, submit yourselves to your masters with all respect, not only to those who are good and considerate, but also to those who are harsh."

Ephesians 6:5 "Slaves, obey your earthly masters with respect and fear, and with sincerity of heart, just as you would obey Christ."

It explains why so many religious fanatics in our country, like Taliban Dan, hate labor unions with such intensity and such vehemence. Daniel Webster has a long history of narrow-minded extremism and religious fanaticism, as well as a record of palling around with like minded Christian Reconstructionists, the very definition of the American Taliban.

For the political right to demonize Obama with racist slurs, compare him to Hitler, claim he's illegitimate, call him a Muslim, a socialist, a fascist and a communist-- and have it echoed 24/7 on Fox and by Hate Talk Radio... well, that's fine. But for a fighting Democrat to give them a tiny taste of their own medicine? Oh, Mabel, get my smelling salts. Taliban Dan claims he's getting a flood of American Taliban dollars this week from religious fanatics all over the country. This might be a good time to let Grayson that we admire what he's doing... and that we have his back. Please, if you can, contribute to America's best congressman here.



UPDATE: Oh... And Taliban Dan's Guru Wants To Stone Astrologers... And People Who Have Sex Before Marriage

Digby just put up the whole horrifying revelation. "Another expert on the Religious Right, Bruce W. Wilson who writes at Talk2Action, has delved into Daniel Webster's ties to Christian Reconstructionists and writes this fascinating piece for Alternet. He notes Webster's continuing association with Bill Gothard, (at whose Institute Webster was recorded making his remarks about women submitting to their husbands in 2009):"

As an August 5, 1996 article in the Gainesville Sun quoted Webster, ‘I respect (Bill Gothard) as much as anybody...

Bill Gothard, in turn, was a close ally of R.J. Rushdoony, considered the father of Christian Reconstructionism and founder of the movement’s flagship institution, the Chalcedon Institute.

As Vice President of the Chalcedon Institute Martin Selbrede stated in the Institute’s March/April 2010 issue of Faith For All Of Life, the only reason Bill Gothard didn’t agree to use Chalcedon founder R.J. Rushdoony’s monumental Institutes of Biblical Law tome in Gothard’s sprawling evangelical empire is that the two couldn’t agree on divorce. Rushdoony’s Institutes was a template for instituting Biblical law in government... [W]while Gothard was categorically opposed to divorce, Rushdoony, a virulently racist Holocaust denier who espoused Geocentrism, was a little more liberal on divorce. In other words, the two men were otherwise in substantial agreement-- except for the sticking point of divorce, they both agreed that Rushdoony’s vision for Biblical law should be imposed upon America.

That vision included instituting stoning as a form of capital punishment for rape, kidnapping, murder, heresy, blasphemy, witchcraft, astrology, adultery, “sodomy or homosexuality,” incest, striking a parent, extreme juvenile delinquency, and “unchastity before marriage.”

Daniel Webster’s association with Bill Gothard’s Institute For Basic Life Training has continued into the present, and a speech Webster made at a Nashville IBLP conference in 2009 has now become a source of controversy due to a new Alan Grayson campaign ad. Grayson is currently taking a media drubbing because of a campaign ad that calls Grayson’s political opponent, Republican Daniel Webster, “Taliban Dan.”