Trump May Have A Perfectly Valid Point About His Followers Drinking Bleach

CoronusCzar by Nancy Ohanian

Pence was on the air with Geraldo Rivera on Thursday, lying the the listeners. When Geraldo started whining about when he could be back on his yacht Pence said, "Honestly," always a giveaway about what's coming next from a Republican, "you look at the trends today, I think by Memorial Day Weekend we will largely have this coronavirus epidemic behind us." The trends? The only trends that would indicate that are the frequency of lies coming out of the Trump Regime. With the Financial Times explaining that the coronavirus deaths could be 60% higher than what governments are reporting, the trends are actually very, very scary. Let's take the U.S., which never really shut down sufficiently to flatten the curve and where the Trumpists are pressuring states to start opening up again. The U.S. was reporting 55,094 deaths yesterday afternoon-- and a crossing of the million case line. But if the Financial Times is correct, tonight's cumulative death toll, already the highest in the world, will be over 88,000.

And the day isn't over

On Saturday I looked at the cases per million people in 8 hard-hit states:

• New York- 13,690 cases per million
• New Jersey- 11,262 cases per million
• Massachusetts- 6,738 cases per million
• Connecticut- 6,450 cases per million
• Rhode Island- 5,921 cases per million
• Louisiana- 5,519 cases per million
• Michigan- 3,544 cases per million
• Delaware- 3,484 cases per million

I liked at the same metric in the same 8 states yesterday, one day later:

• New York- 14,953 cases per million
• New Jersey- 12,277 cases per million
• Massachusetts- 7,811 cases per million
• Connecticut- 6,864 cases per million
• Rhode Island- 7,040 cases per million
• Louisiana- 5,741 cases per million
• Michigan- 3,794 cases per million
• Delaware- 4,249 cases per million

And here they are this afternoon:

• New York- 15,150 cases per million
• New Jersey- 12,519 cases per million
• Massachusetts- 8,267 cases per million
• Connecticut- 7,055 cases per million
• Rhode Island- 7,295 cases per million
• Louisiana- 5.804 cases per million
• Michigan- 3,837 cases per million
• Delaware- 4,383 cases per million

Notice the trend isn't what you might expect from what Pence told Geraldo's listeners. Every state is going up, up, up. And by the way, this is building in anti-distancing red states as well. Here are the numbers from 8 Trump states yesterday:

• South Dakota- 2,559 cases per million
• Georgia- 2,272 cases per million
• Indiana- 2,262 cases per million
• Mississippi- 1,978 cases per million
• Iowa- 1,748 cases per million
• Tennessee- 1,453 cases per million
• Nebraska- 1,434 cases per million
• Utah- 1,352 cases per million

And, here are the same 8 red states' numbers this evening:

• South Dakota- 2,598 cases per million
• Georgia- 2,322 cases per million
• Indiana- 2,405 cases per million
• Mississippi- 2,039 cases per million
• Iowa- 1,873 cases per million
• Tennessee-1,491 cases per million
• Nebraska- 1,590 cases per million
• Utah- 1,390 cases per million

We've discussed Louisiana crackpot Tony Spell a few times before. He's been arrested a couple of times, encouraging his disciples to break social distancing rules (and also for attempted murder). But, of course, no one is serious about it-- not even the attempted murder-- so all he got was house arrest, which he ignored. Yesterday, The Advocate reported that he was peaching again, this time with an ankle bracelet, telling his congregation it's a "dirty rotten shame when you're hiding in America." Its members sang and waved signs reading "I stand with Pastor Spell."

One condition of Spell's release is that he "refrain from any and all criminal conduct, including but not limited to strictly abiding by the all emergency orders issued by the Governor of the State of Louisiana."

...The pastor has said the state's stay-at-home and social distancing orders, both aimed at limiting the novel coronavirus, violate his and his congregants' First Amendment rights to assemble and practice their faith.

At least one church member had died after contracting COVID-19, the respiratory illness caused by the new virus, and a lawyer tapped to represent the church's fight to hold services was hospitalized.

It isn't known where the men contracted the virus.

Spell has told congregants who've attended services to refrain from touching each other and to stay home if they're sick.

"God gave you an immune system to kill the virus," Spell told his flock Sunday morning. "I'm not going to bind the virus."

Along with the recent aggravated assault and improper backing infractions, Spell has also been cited on  six misdemeanor counts of violating the governor's stay-at-home order.

The house arrest order and condition he remain on his property about 50 yards from the church and refrain from criminal activity-- including violating the state's ban on large gatherings-- stem from the assault charge.

Parish officials have noted other houses of worship have streamed their services in place of in-person gatherings.

Aside from the parishioner who attended services at the church and died, Spell's lawyer, Jeff Wittenbrink, is now in the hospital with COVID-19. Spell has asked his followers to send their $1,200 bailout checks to the church.

Two responses to this kind of story might be:

1- Let them all get sick and die; the country would be way better off without them and their genes.

2- They have the freedom to practice their religion and it's unconstitutional to try to stop them.

I tend to agree with #1-- except for one factor. The religionist nuts who contract the disease might be asymptomatic and could go to the grocery store and spread the contagion to normal people. It's an abstract contention that's a tad difficult for most low-IQ Trump supporters to grapple with and understand. And that's, basically, the same reason why #2 doesn't work. They certainly do have the freedom to practice their religion-- unless doing so is harming other people. That's why I think practicing their religion by injecting Lysol and drinking bleach-- the blood of Trump-- instead of consecrated wine is the perfect answer. Suicide doesn't hurt anyone else and society is rid of them and their gene pools and they're happy enough to martyr themselves. Win-Win!

Snake-Oil by Chip Proser

Will Trump's Fascist Attorney General Prosecute Kansas Governor Laura Kelly For Taking Away Church-Goers Right To Spread The Coronavirus Yesterday?

Nancy Ohanian envisions Trump celebrating Easter Sunday

Kansas is one hella red state. The last time the state voted for a Democrats was in 1964. In 2016, Hillary won just 35.7% of the vote. The 40-member state Senate has 29 Republicans and 11 Democrats and the state House consists of 84 Republicans and 41 Dems. But in 2018, Kansans got lucky-- luckier than anyone could have imagined. Democratic state Senator Laura Kelly ran for governor and the GOP's mainstream candidate was defeated in the primary by neo-Nazi Kris Kobach. Enough Kansans had had enough Kobach to swing the election to Kelly-- 489,337 (47.8%) to 443,346 (43.3%).

A lot of Kansans were not exposed to COVID-19 yesterday because of that election. Kelly was late to institute social distancing rules to hinder the spread of the pandemic in her state but unlike so many Republican governors in states as red as hers, she finally did it and did not include an exemption for churches. The Republicans in the state legislature went insane and reversed her order, with crackpot Republican Death Cult Attorney General Derek Schmidt claiming Kelly's oder violated the state constitution. Schmidt told law enforcement not to enforce Kelly's order.

On Saturday, as the religionist arm of the Republican Death Cult prepared to lure thousands of congregants into churches-- one of the most effective ways to spread the contagion-- the state Supreme Court, at Kelly's request, struck down the Republican efforts to override her order. The Court-- meeting via video chat-- unanimously ruled that the legislative council does not have the authority to overturn the governors order and that her ban of gatherings with more than 10 people would stand.

The Topeka Capital-Journal reported that one Republican Death Cult leader, "Pastor Aaron Harris, of Calvary Baptist Church in Junction City, said the high court’s decision doesn’t 'validate the governor’s order,' which carries the full force of law. 'The legislative council may not have had legal authority to revoke it, but it is still unconstitutional,' Harris said. 'We’ll be having services tomorrow. I hope and pray that our local LE will respect the constitution.'"

Needless to say, Harris isn't the only sociopath eager to spread the disease. The NY Times reported that, even with Trump urging people to celebrate Easter virtually, "a small number of renegade pastors are pressing on with in-person church services, defying stay-at-home orders and the guidance from health officials.

A pastor in Louisiana has boasted that his church would have a crowd of up to 2,000 worshipers. A pastor in Jackson, Miss., has organized an in-person service, but said he would disperse it if the police show up.

Restrictions on mass gatherings have frustrated a small number of religious conservatives, who see the rules as attempts to limit Christian practice. In Kentucky on Saturday, a federal judge blocked Mayor Greg Fischer of Louisville from restricting drive-in church services, noting that drive-in liquor stores were still open.

The Supreme Court of Kansas ruled late Saturday night to uphold Gov. Laura Kelly’s order limiting the size of church services on Easter Sunday to 10 people. Republican legislators had argued that the order restricted their constitutional freedom.

The governors of Florida and Texas have exempted religious services from stay-at-home orders. In Kentucky, mass gatherings over Easter weekend are permitted, but anyone who participates must quarantine for 14 days. To enforce this, the state will record the license plates outside large gatherings, Gov. Andy Beshear said.

The Department of Justice may take action against state and local leaders who have specifically restricted in-person gatherings. Attorney General William P. Barr is “monitoring” government regulation of religious services, a Department of Justice spokeswoman said in a tweet on Saturday night.

“While social distancing policies are appropriate during this emergency, they must be applied evenhandedlyand not single out religious orgs,” the spokeswoman, Kerri Kupec, said. “Expect action from DOJ next week.”

Republicans Insist Churches Are Essential Businesses-- Even As Congregations Become Hot-Beds Of COVID-19 Infection

Failure by Nancy Ohanian

Since the shutdown here in L.A., gun shops have been busier than usual, sometimes with long lines snaking down the street in front of them. A friend of mine who has never owned one before, bought one, a shotgun. Are people worried marauders looking for pasta and toilet paper could be a danger to their families? Another exception-- primarily, but not exclusively, in Southern states-- is even crazier: churches. I recall in early December, when I was flying back to the U.S. from Seoul (on a Korean airline) there was whispering about a strange new deadly disease sweeping through a religious sect centered around the Shincheonji Church of Jesus in Daegu. What started as a few dozen cases clustered around a few churches with bizarre and unhealthy practices has led to over 10,000 cases across the county.

Many Southern governors have excepted churches from shelter-in-place orders. Florida is the worst of them but church services are also going full blast in Alabama, South Carolina, Louisiana, Tennessee, West Virginia, New Hampshire, Delaware, Michigan, Mississippi, Oklahoma, Texas, Missouri and Arkansas. Most of these states have the largest proportion of elderly citizens (and Trump supporters). Ron DeSantis, widely considered the governor who has handled pandemic the worst in the nation, said "I don’t think the government has the authority to close a church. I’m certainly not going to do that. In Easter season, people are going to want to have access to religious services."

Most of the religious facilities still operating are non-mainstream cults and sects. The Mormons have suspended services as have Catholics, mainstream Jews and Muslims. Even the mainstream evangelical churches have decided to suspend services. Snake-handling services are still going strong and, of course, ultra orthodox Hasidic Jews are ignoring the pandemic entirely-- although Hasidic communities are being ravaged by COVID-19.

There's a battle raging in Wisconsin over religious gatherings right now. The governor, Tony Evers, is a Democrat, but both houses of the legislature are controlled by backward fanatical Republicans who are demanding that churches not be forced to close down. So far Evers is ignoring them, well aware that in-person gatherings during this pandemic are extremely risky and need to be avoided."

Wisconsin' crackpot Assembly speaker Robin Vos wrote to Evers: "It is more important than ever that we allow Wisconsinites to observe their individual faiths. To that end, we ask that you work with Wisconsin churches and temples to allow them to hold Easter or Passover services, even if it’s outside.”

Milwaukee Mayor Tom Barrett reminded the nuts that "This disease does not have a religious exemption. As much as I would love this disease to have a religious exemption, a family exemption, a voting exemption, it does not. And and it’s not just the people who would attend these services, but it would be the people that they would infect."

No doubt, there are people thinking that if a bunch of moron Trumpers want to risk their lives, let them... and some might even think it would be best for the national gene pool. But that is the wrong attitude.

It’s not just church members potentially infecting themselves; it’s that they may later infect people in their families or people they cross paths with at a grocery store.

“Religious freedom” isn’t the issue here. The only issue is public safety. Republicans just don’t give a damn. They’d rather see more people suffer than do something difficult that helps everyone in the state.

Plenty of religious leaders have already found a way around this. They’re live-streaming their sermons and they’ll still celebrate the holidays, even if the method is far from their preferred option. But guess what? That’s what we’re all doing, whether we’re students, teachers, or parents.

It’s not pastors making this demand of Evers; it’s the GOP trying to curry favor with those pastors by acting like defenders of faith. Republicans are the problem, not the religious leaders. If only Wisconsin residents understood that enough that they stopped voting for the GOP.

Anyway, if your pastor insists that you attend an in-person service right now, then you’re part of a death cult and you need to get the hell out. Apparently we can say the same about the Republican Party.

Last week, the CBS TV channel in Sacramento reported that about a third of all "confirmed coronavirus cases in Sacramento County is being linked to church-related gatherings." Over the weekend, a team of Washington Post reporters wrote about an open church there that drew 7 congregants-- including the pastor-- for Palm Sunday. "For the religious," they wrote. "one of the crueler elements of the coronavirus and its potent contagiousness is that places where people go in times of fear, in search of solace in faith and in friends, are closed in many states to stop the spread of the disease. Churches, temples and other places of worship nationwide — where congregants sit close, take Communion, share hugs and handshakes and pecks on the cheek — have served as hothouses for the virus, with religious gatherings exacerbating outbreaks in New Rochelle, N.Y.; Washington, D.C.; Glenville, Ill.; and Sacramento, among others... The in-person gatherings in some cases go against many stay-at-home orders and bans on assemblies of more than 10 people, which President Trump has endorsed. Eight states do not have such orders, but there have been arguments within the White House that a national regulation should be put in place as infections accelerate."

[S]ome houses of worship and gatherings of religious leaders have proved particularly dangerous in areas where the virus has been prevalent.

Following the outbreak in Sacramento, Mayor Darrell Steinberg (D) made clear that disregard for the prohibition on church gatherings could prompt police intervention. Steinberg’s wife serves as cantor at the city’s largest synagogue, which now streams its services online.

“This is a time when people are coming to church for hope and meaning, and in that way, faith has never been more important,” said Steinberg, a member of Congregation B’nai Israel, one of the oldest west of the Mississippi. “I believe passionately in the free exercise of religion, but I must say I am outraged that anyone would use the free exercise of religion to justify gathering together at this time.”

“To claim that the free exercise of religion is absolute and outweighs the obvious life-and-death risk of praying together right now,” Steinberg continued, “well, it’s blasphemy itself.”

Sacramento police have been advised that in some cases, it might be permissible to disperse a congregation. Steinberg said those acts would happen only when there is a “blatant disregard” for the prohibition.

“We’re not going to use arresting people as the way to address this,” the mayor said. “Social pressure is much more appropriate, and that social pressure includes making it clear that these are legal orders being defied.”

The concern extends nationally, given the reach of the virus, from megacities to small towns.

In late February, six people who attended an Episcopal church conference at the Omni Hotel in downtown Louisville tested positive for the coronavirus. North Carolina public health officials say “multiple cases” of the virus are linked to a March event held by the Faith Assembly Christian Center at the Millennium Hotel Durham, despite a ban on gatherings of more than 100 people at the time.

Rural Minnesota has reported at least nine coronavirus cases traced to a church. And 43 fell ill, one fatally, after attending a March 15 service at the Life Church of Glenview, in Glenview, Ill., a Chicago suburb. At least 10 members tested positive for the coronavirus. The service was held several days before the Illinois governor imposed a stay-at-home order.

There are other cases. But none has reached the scope of the tragedy at the Bethany Slavic Missionary Church, a 3,500-member congregation that occupies a fenced compound here in southeast Sacramento.

Public health officials say 71 congregants of the church, a major gathering place for the city’s large Eastern European immigrant community, have been infected by the coronavirus. As of Saturday, that infection number accounts for 18 percent of Sacramento County’s total cases. Ten people have died in the county.

The church is now closed, its high gates locked to outsiders and a police car parked outside the main sanctuary. Signs posted are in English and Russian, one in large print on the front door announcing: “No Any Services.”

Among the sick is senior pastor Adam Bondaruk, who has been at the church for three decades. The church administrator, Viktor Lyulkin, said by phone that Bondaruk, a Ukrainian immigrant, has been hospitalized and is in stable condition.

...A poll released this week of Protestant pastors found that the number of churches holding services dropped from 99 percent on March 1 to 64 percent by March 15, and then to 7 percent by March 29, according to Lifeway Christian Resources. Lifeway is the publishing division of the Southern Baptist Convention.

Polls also have shown that those who lean conservative politically are more skeptical of the virus’s seriousness and danger. Until early March, Trump falsely claimed the coronavirus cases were decreasing and said the disease would disappear “like a miracle.”

Those who attend church more frequently are much more likely to identify as or lean Republican, polls also show. Forty-four percent of the GOP leaners go to religious services at least weekly, compared with 29 percent of Democrats.

Texas Gov. Greg Abbott (R) declared last week that religious services are essential to the lives of Texans. Pastor Jason Sides used Facebook Live to tell his flock he was determined to open Christian World Ministries in San Antonio.

Sides had held a prayer service on Wednesday, and 75 people came into the 1,000-person sanctuary for the first time in weeks.

“If church is as essential to you as a trip to the pharmacy or Walmart, the doors will be open,” Sides said Wednesday. “We will be trusting God to take care of us.”

But by the weekend, Sides had had second thoughts.

San Antonio city leaders pleaded with churches Friday to use remote services. Sides said he struggled with the decision, keeping in mind the dozens of calls from members telling him their homes were not safe, their marriages were falling apart, their jobs lost.

“We hear a lot about the external, the import of washing hands and not touching the face,” Sides said. “But what of the internal?”

...The Rev. Tony Spell, pastor of the megachurch Life Tabernacle outside Baton Rouge, has been defying an emergency order by the governor banning gatherings of more than 50 people. Police on Tuesday issued a misdemeanor summons to Spell, who says that he had 1,000 people in his church Sunday and that he was planning to hold services again this Sunday.

“We feel we are being persecuted for our faith by being told to close our doors and not gather,” he said. He noted that some stores are open, including clinics that perform abortions. “You’re saying religion isn’t essential, but Target is.”

Is It Freedom Of Religion-- Or Child Abuse?

I have a recollection from when I was in high school in Brooklyn that some kids went to "the Yeshiva" and that it was a very good school-- like a high end academic school that taught all the stuff we learned in secular school plus the religious stuff from the Torah. In my mind it was one of those special magnet schools for kids... like Bronx High School of Science. Looking back now, I think the school I had in mind was Yeshiva of Flatbush, kind of in my neighborhood. I lived on Avenue P and it was on Avenue J. It was founded as an elementary school in 1927 and a high school was added in 1950 and it was coed, synthesizing Judaic studies and the liberal arts. Kids were prepared-- well prepared in fact-- for the best colleges in the country. I never gave what I thought of as "the Yeshiva" much thought again after my childhood in Brooklyn.

Now it turns out there are plenty of yeshivas in New York-- and not up to the standards of Yeshiva of Flatbush. For example, Yeshiva Derech HaTorah Elementary School and High School opened in 1980 because reactionary parents steeped in ignorance wanted an all boys school completely devoted to Torah, and firmly committed not to America or American values but to the State of Israel instead. It began operations in 1980 and opened a "high school" in 2006.

There are dozens of ultra-Orthodox yeshivas in New York City now-- with tens of thousands of students-- that don't teach history, science, English or math, just superstitious nonsense that ill-prepares young students for life in the modern world. Their communities voted overwhelmingly for Trump last year. And because of the immense political clout-- they are zombies who vote the way their rabbis tell them to vote-- the authorities let them slide.

A report from Young Advocates for Fair Education asserts, credibly, that "most Hasidic children attend special non-public schools from age 5 or earlier to adulthood or beyond. The language of instruction is Yiddish, the same language the students speak at home, and sometimes includes some Hebrew and/or Aramaic texts. The schools are separated by gender: girls attend a girls’ school, and boys attend a boys’ school, or Yeshiva. Both provide a rigorous religious education intended to build the foundation for a life lived according to Hasidic Jewish principles. Where they differ, however, is in the education they provide beyond this foundation. Girls, who are not allowed to become rabbis learn general subjects such as English, math, science, and social studies during the second half of the school day. Boys, on the other hand, are expected to aspire to become rabbis, so they continue studying Jewish texts, such as the Torah (the Hebrew Bible), Talmud (Jewish law), and other religious subjects for the entire school day... When yeshivas do provide education in secular subjects, it is in just a few grades, for one hour to ninety minutes at the end of the long school day. Typically, instruction is provided in very basic English reading and arithmetic, along with minimal levels of English writing. Teachers are often unqualified-- some barely know English themselves-- and the 'English' class period (as the time devoted to secular studies is called) is often treated as free time for restless students. Textbooks are heavily censored, when they are used at all. High schools for boys typically provide absolutely no secular education. Without secular education, young men lack the requisite skills to obtain employment with a decent income to support themselves and their (often large) families. Furthermore, because most yeshivas choose not to administer the Regents Examinations or to award diplomas, graduates find it nearly impossible to pursue post-secondary education to attain the skills they need. This puts Hasidic families at high risk for poverty and reliance upon government assistance. Approximately 43% of Hasidic households in New York are poor and another 16% are near poor. Hasidic communities in Brooklyn have a greater percentage of families receiving cash assistance, food stamps, public health care coverage, and Section 8 housing vouchers, as compared to Brooklyn and New York City as a whole. The percentage of people in a heavily Hasidic district of Brooklyn utilizing public income support such as cash assistance (TANF), Supplemental Security Income (SSI), and Medicaid has increased dramatically in the last decade as the population grew rapidly without improvements in education."

Responding to complaints that several dozen yeshivas in New York City fell short of the state requirement that they provide an education “at least substantially equivalent” to that offered in public schools, officials at the city’s Department of Education said they would investigate. That was two years ago.

On Wednesday, saying that the city had repeatedly blown self-imposed deadlines for releasing a report on the investigation, a group of activists stood on the steps of City Hall and accused Mayor Bill de Blasio and his schools chancellor, Carmen Fariña, of turning a blind eye to what they called educational neglect.

Roughly 57,000 students attend ultra-Orthodox Jewish yeshivas in New York City, and according to the activists, from a group called Young Advocates for Fair Education, many of the students, particularly the boys, will finish school with poor to nonexistent English and math skills, and little knowledge of history or science.

Naftuli Moster, 31, the executive director of the group, said he was disappointed with the mayor and the chancellor.

“Both are said to be staunch advocates for children, for human rights, for fairness,” he said, “yet when it came to education of tens of thousands of Hasidic children they failed us and them miserably. I wasn’t taught New York history, so I can’t say this for sure, but this appears to be, to me, as one of the biggest scandals in this city.”

Mr. Moster said that, given the administration’s delays, the group had decided to release its own report on the yeshivas, based on interviews and a survey of former students and parents. In the report, which was distributed to reporters, the group identified the yeshivas that they considered the worst offenders. Among them was Educational Institute Oholei Torah in Crown Heights, which the report said provided no instruction in secular subjects.

“I attended school Sunday through Friday, everyday all day, and I did not learn how to read or write in the English language,” said Chaim Levin, 28, a graduate. “I was not taught history, science, or geography, and I learned no math skills. The only thing we studied was texts from the Old Testament and the Talmud.”

Mr. Levin said he had been surprised to learn that Mayor de Blasio had sent a congratulatory message to the yeshiva for a fund-raiser it held this year. Mr. de Blasio cited the institution’s “excellence” and said it gave its students “the tools they need to build solid foundations for their futures.”

“This is false,” Mr. Levin said. “Oholei Torah has done no such thing. Mayor de Blasio and Chancellor Fariña know this very well.”

...The report said that some yeshivas offered more instruction in secular subjects than Oholei Torah. On average, the report said, boys in elementary school received roughly 90 minutes of instruction in secular subjects, including reading and writing in English, four days a week. After age 13, the typical boy received no instruction in secular subjects. Since girls cannot become rabbis, they typically receive more secular education than boys.

Because some yeshivas have claimed that they are limited by financial resources, Young Advocates for Fair Education tried to track the amount of federal, state and city funding going to yeshivas. This was difficult because Hasidic yeshivas use a tax exemption granted churches that does not require them to file financial documents with the Internal Revenue Service. Nonetheless, the group found that some yeshivas receive hundreds of thousands or even millions of dollars in public funds.

Many have suggested that the de Blasio administration is stalling for political reasons, because ultra-Orthodox Jews tend to vote in large numbers.

Maybe the best reason to spread word of Nancy Reagan's first home is that she doesn't seem to like people knowing

Justin's caption: "Though this modest 2-story frame house with yellow siding at 149-14 Roosevelt Avenue, between 149th Street and 149th Place, remains unmarked by a plaque or medallion of any kind, this is the home where former First Lady Nancy Reagan spent the first two years of her life."

by Ken

The other day I promised to return to what sounds like a fairly routine question: Where was Nancy Reagan born? What makes the question rather more interesting is that it seems to be a touchy subject for Mrs. Reagan, and suggests in turn that Mrs. R has a relationship to reality reminiscent of that of her late husband, the sainted Ronnie, whose most enduring legacy to the country seems to me the lesson, now totally absorbed by the Right, that reality is whatever you want it to be -- or, to put it another way, whatever makes you feel best.

Now of course "feeling best" doesn't necessarily mean "feeling contented." For right-wingers, in fact, it often means what seems like the opposite: feeling mad as hell. We just need to remember that one of the things they like best in life is feeling outraged, aggrieved, betrayed, and so on. And of course the people who treat the unwashed rubes like brainless puppets know this better than anyone, and know how much return there is to be gotten from getting the pathetic, otherwsie-useless, doody-kicking legions of right-wing saps hopping mad at the usual targets. Thus the ease of spreading psychotic delusions about, say, Hillary Clinton, or Planned Parenthood, or indeed anyone with a working brain and an ounce of decency or humanity.


IF YOU WERE TO LOOK NANCY REAGAN UP --

Read more »

"Last Week Tonight with John Oliver" goes toe to toe with the televangelists: Let's welcome "Our Lady of Perpetual Exemption"

by Ken

Last night, in showcasing last week's Last Week Tonight with John Oliver feature report, "Sex Ed," I tried to make it clear that no disrespect was intended to this week's -- a blockbuster taking on the 21st-century version of televangelists, bigger and crasser than ever -- and taking even more audacious advantage of the IRS's nearly complete lack of enforcement when it comes to who and what qualifies as a religious institution.

In the segment, we see a training film on "Churches and Religious Organizations" for IRS people, IRS Senior Tax Specialist Virginia Richardson describes U.S. tax law in this area as -- "for reasons as old as the United States" -- "purposely broad and sometimes a little vague." To which John responds:

"A little vague"? Oh, they are underselling that. Because the films of Christopher Nolan are "a little vague." A text from your mom reading, "Please call. Not emergency but please call. Very important. Don't worry," that's "a little vague." The IRS regulations are close to meaningless. According to their tax code, not only is the term "church" not specifically defined, but --

"U.S. tax law," John notes, "allows television preachers to get away with almost anything. We know this from personal experience." And he proceeds to introduce Last Week Tonight's very own televangelical enterprise, Our Lady of Perpetual Exemption.

Note: A note on the YouTube page notes: "Our Lady of Perpetual Exemption will not be able to accept donations from Church supporters from the states of Mississippi, Nevada, Pennsylvania, or South Carolina. We apologize for any inconvenience."

#

"Justice Ginsburg explains everything you need to know about religious liberty in two sentences" (Ian Millhiser)

Plus: Justice Nino daydreams about mandatory polygamy


"Unlike the exemption this Court approved in Burwell v. Hobby Lobby Stores, Inc., accommodating petitioner's religious belief in this case would not detrimentally affect others who do not share petitioner's belief. On that understanding, I join the Court's opinion."

-- Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, ruling
with a unanimous Court today in Holt v. Hobbs

by Ken

The case itself, this Holt v. Hobbs, turned out to be so simple constitutionally that not only was the Supreme Court's verdict unanimous, but even dim bulb "Sammy the Hammer" Alito actually got it well enough to explain it almost right in the Court's ruling.

The "almost right" refers to the distinction Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg understood was necessary to set forth, which she did in the two sentences quoted above, the two sentences in question in Ian Millhiser's ThinkProgress post "Justice Ginsburg explains everything you need to know about religious liberty in two sentences."

The one tricky thing about the case was that it called on the Roberts Court to apply the religious liberties it has become so protective of to a non-Christian. And this court, in common with the far-right-wing ideology it now champions, while pretending to be great believers in "freedom," in fact generally supports only the precise kinds of freedom for the precise kinds of people it believes are right -- meaning, usually, Right. However, in this case even the easily fooled Sammy the Hammer wasn't fooled.

The case concerns a Muslim inmate in an Arkansas maximum-security prison, one "Gregory Houston Holt AKA Abdul Maalik Muhammad," who claims that preventing him from growing even the half-inch beard he's willing to settle for violates his religious requirement to have a beard, without the legal justification in terms of actual harm required by the federal Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Persons Act. And Justice Alito agrees in his ruling that Arkansas prison officials haven't met the test of RLUIPA, to provide credible examples of how allowing the limited beard imposes a security burden on the prison.

IN THE ORAL ARGUMENTS --

The justices devoted a fair amount of questioning to the half-inch-beard standard, understandably wondering if there is an enforceable standard. Justice Ginsburg began by raising the utterly reasonable question: "If this prisoner wanted to have a full beard, would RLUIPA require that the prison administration allow him to do that?" Again, it's a fair question, even though, as the petitioner's advocate pointed out, 40 other state prison bureaus allow beards without any restriction of length, and it would seem under RLUIPA that it's the prison's burden to establish the dangers of the requested beard. But Justice Scalia, pointing out rightly that the actual Islamic requirement would be for a full beard, not a half-inch one, pursued his questioning with the analogy of a hypothetical religion that requires polygamy, and whether that requirement would be satisfied by allowing just two wives.

Now, let's assume in the religion that requires polygamy. I mean, could ­­-- could I say to the prison, well, you know, okay, I won't have three wives; just let me have two wives. I mean, you're still violating your religion, it seems to me, if he allows his beard to be clipped to one ­­ one inch, isn't he?

Again, there's a legitimate issue thrashing around in this thicket, but it's couched in such a whacked-out form as to raise two obvious questions: [1] Would Justice Scalia conjure such a bizarre analogy in discussing possible limitations of a Christian religious requirement? [2] What the hell is wrong with that man?

ANYWAY, JUSTICE SAMMY DID SEEM TO GRASP . . .

. . . in his opinion that the Arkansas prison folks had failed to make the kind of need-based case justifying a religious infringement which would be required under RLUIPA, and that's pretty much the end of the story.

Except that, as Ian notes, it's not quite the end of the story. At least it wasn't for Justice Ginsburg. Ian explains (links onsite):

Though Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg joins Alito’s opinion, she also penned a two sentence concurring opinion explaining why Tuesday’s decision is a proper application of an individual’s religious freedoms — and why she believes that the Court’s birth control decision in Hobby Lobby was erroneous. “Unlike the exemption this Court approved in Burwell v. Hobby Lobby Stores, Inc.,” Ginsburg explains, “accommodating petitioner’s religious belief in this case would not detrimentally affect others who do not share petitioner’s belief. On that understanding, I join the Court’s opinion.”

Prior to Hobby Lobby, the Court’s precedents honored a careful balance between religious liberty and the legal rights of others. People of faith have robust rights to honor their beliefs and act on their conscience, but they couldn’t interfere with someone else’s legal rights. Indeed, Hobby Lobby’s claim that they could defy a federal rule requiring them to include birth control in their employee health plan was especially weak because Hobby Lobby is a for-profit business. As the Court held in United States v. Lee, “[w]hen followers of a particular sect enter into commercial activity as a matter of choice, the limits they accept on their own conduct as a matter of conscience and faith are not to be superimposed on the statutory schemes which are binding on others in that activity.”

Unlike Hobby Lobby, Muhammad sought a concession to his faith that has no impact on anyone other than himself. As Alito’s opinion in Holt lays out, the prison’s concerns about the consequences of allowing him to grow a beard were unwarranted. And no one else will have to do anything with their facial hair (or, for that matter, lose access to important medical care), because Muhammad will be allowed to grow a beard.

Score a good catch for Ian, I would say, and a good catch for Justice Ginsburg.

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Are "good Christians" really incapable of understanding why this is so offensive -- not to mention (one hopes) illegal?

There's audio on the DNAinfo website.

by Ken

One of the favorite lies of the Christian Right is that the U.S. is a "Christian country." There is, of course, no basis in fact for this assertion, either historical or documentary. And since one of the favorite habits of right-wingers of every stripe is telling lies about our revered Founding Fathers, naturally they love to tell the bare-faced lie about them being good Christians. On the contrary. As one of my favorite New York City walking-tour leaders, Justin Ferate, likes to point out whenever the subject comes up (or he can make the subject come up), with only very occasional exceptions the Founding Fathers weren't even Christians.

It's frequently noted that many of them were deists, and therefore believed in God, but there is no indication that they believed in any of the Christ apparatus, which is kind of central to being of the Christian faith. Justin will usually go on to point out that one thing the FFs overwhelmingly were is Masons. George Washington took the oath of office as president not on a Christian bible but on a Masonic bible.

And Justin will usually also point out that by and large even the Christians among the colonists had had quite enough of the experience of state-sponsored religion, and wanted no part of it here. As witness the constitutional mandate for separation of church and state. Oh, right-wingers like to lie about that too, pretending that the First Amendment didn't really mean to establish separation of church and state, but then, lying is what right-wingers do. It's what they expend nearly all their mental activity doing.

And so right-wingers, and especially the fascists of the Christian Right, especially love to lie with the claim that separation of church and state somehow infringes on their religious freedoms. If there are any of them genuinely ignorant enough to believe this, it's only because they have been miseducated to have their brains function at the moron level; the rest of them know better and are just, well, lying.

The school-prayer issue is a perfect example. Absolutely to restriction on the rights of students to pray has ever been hinted at. What the Christian fascists can't have in public schools, for reasons that should be blindingly obvious to even the most degraded moron, is official public prayer, which is thereby inflicted on students of all beliefs. I really don't understand how it's possible to be so stupid that you can't understand something so ridiculously simple.

Which brings us to this story, reported for DNAinfo New York by Nigel Chiwaya:
Opening Prayer to Jesus Sparks Shouting Match at Precinct Council Meeting

WASHINGTON HEIGHTS -- An uptown police precinct council member sparked a shouting match with community members after opening Wednesday night's public meeting with a prayer to Jesus Christ.

34th Precinct Community Council secretary Loreen Felis, who has been at her post for the past five months, opened the meeting at Isabella Geriatric Center with an invocation that repeatedly and exclusively referenced Christian religion.

"All things have been created through him and for him. He is before all things and him all things hold together; and he is the head of the body; the church," Felis said.

"Peace through his blood shed on the cross. And the body of Christ says Amen."

The prayer drew immediate outrage from audience members, who said prayer had no place in a public meeting on issues of neighborhood government.

"We are coming to a meeting that has to do with the community, and to have to listen to a prayer?" asked Eddie Santos, general manager at Papasito Restaurant and Agave Bar. "You have a thousand other cultures -- why would you want do a prayer?"

"I go to church, but this is ridiculous."

Rud Morales, owner of Negro Claro lounge, told Felis, "I don't want to hear you pray here. It's not in the bylaws."

Felis stood her ground and began shouting back at Morales, saying that people complaining about the prayer were uptown club owners who need God's intervention more than anyone. . . .

Now there clearly was overlap here between the prayer issue and ongoing community complaints about noise level and rowdiness emanating from some area restaurants and bars. But the prayer issue is open and shut. Not to Ms. Felis, though.

"This is not about religion. It's about keeping us in unity," Felis told DNAinfo New York after the meeting.

"The nightclub owners don't understand that they're supposed to be on their knees praying 24/7 because they don't know if having youngsters in their club could form some kind of chaos, not to mention terrorism."

The president of the 34th Precinct Community Council, George Espinal, after spending a fair amount of time answering charges of "sowing discord," as reporter Chiwaya characterizes the claims of the business owners, "between restaurant owners and residents over noise on Dyckman Street" (to promote his run for district leader, the business leaders say), defended Felis, saying her prayer "was to start the meeting on a good note."

He added that opening prayers are also standard practice at several other precinct councils around the city. He declined to say which ones.

"We're not trying to proselytize anyone or make anyone join any denomination," Espinal said. "The majority of the precinct councils have an opening prayer that is non-denominational."

However, in light of the controversy, Espinal added that the council would look into the incident. He would not say whether he planned to allow the practice to continue at future meetings. The next meeting is scheduled for the end of November.

Apparently Ms. Felis is incapable of understanding how unallowable her Jesus chatter is for an official at a public meeting, doesn't grasp that saying, "This is not about religion," doesn't make it not about religion. So it may not be totally surprising that her belief that "it's about keeping us in unity" did the opposite.

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"This mystery gay man" -- the last gay Chick-fil-A customer -- "owes his entire gay identity to Chick-fil-A" (courtesy of Casual Mafia)

Plus: A slick cartoon while we await some Good Christian outrage over the Sikh temple shooting (including CARTOON UPDATES)


"I just feel that Chick-fil-A is just part of my gay identity. I was actually at a Chick-fil-A, eating a Chick-fil-A sandwich, when I realized that I was gay."

by Ken

I couldn't resist sharing this Casual Mafia video, which answers the question: Exactly how many chicken sandwiches does one have to eat in order to be turned gay? Okay, maybe the video doesn't exactly answer the question, but it sure as shit asks it, which is pretty unexpected, wouldn't you say? The gay Chick-fil-A customer is Justin Martindale; the, um, deeply confused interviewer is Josh Macuga.

"I just want to say, thanks, Chick-fil-A, for letting me realize what I can be -- gayer than I ever intended to be, and, uh, every time I eat a chicken sandwich [takes bite and groans with pleasure] it just makes me want to do all of the gayest stuff I could ever think of. Like, all of it."


MEANWHILE, GOOD CHRISTIAN OUTRAGE OVER THE
SIKH TEMPLE SHOOTING COULD COME, ER, ANYTIME

CARTOON UPDATE(S): (1) I should have mentioned that you can click to (splendidly) enlarge the cartoon. (2) More important, I should have identified the cartoonist, who's new to me. He's Chris Britt, of the (Illinois) State Journal-Register.

As I pointed out on Monday, we know how important "freedom of religion" is to those Christian blowhards. Why, when the creepy little voices they hear echoing in the empty hollows of their heads tell them that Christianity is under attack, that's just the importantest thing in the world, unless you count denouncing the dastardly War on Christmas (which exists in those same empty heads and nowhere else).

I know some people are saying that Christianity in America has been reduced to a cult of sociopathic fascist doodybrains. (Not, by the way, that an outrage like what happened in Oak Creek would be a whit more acceptable if the targets had been Muslims, but the grim fact remains that American Christian haters are so screechingly stupid, they don't know that Sikhs aren't Muslims.) However, I can feel in my bones that we're going to hear some red-hot Christian outrage over the violent disruption and murder of innocent Sikh worshippers . . . um, any week now.

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Would coverage of the Wisconsin shooting have been different if it'd been good white Christians under assault rather than strange "other" people?

NYT caption: "A vigil in downtown Milwaukee for the dead and the wounded. 'Everyone here is thinking this is a hate crime for sure,' said Manjit Singh, who goes to a different temple in the region. 'People think we are Muslims.' "

"I think that he felt that he was misdirected and that the service helped him find a direction in life."

-- Laura Page (to the NYT), about her stepson
Wade M. Page's Army service

by Ken

I wanted to write something about the Wisconsin shooting last night, in which six Sikh worshippers are now reported dead, with several other shooting victims of various descriptions reported in critical condition, but there was so little information that it was almost impossible to say anything, except . . . .

And maybe I should have said it. The one thing that was pretty clear was that some armed nutjob -- true to the NRA mantra that guns don't kill people, people kill people -- set out to kill as many Sikhs as he could. Beyond that we would have had to resort to supposition, to supposing for example that the Sikh temple in Oak Creek was targeted because its worshippers were "other," ethnically and religiously. That supposition would have led us to the assumption that we were dealing with a hate crime, perpetrated by a hate criminal who took advantage of the pathological American passion for guns.

Now that we begin to find out a little about the perp, Wade M. Page, what would have been a mere supposition last night is running pretty much according to script, and then some. As the NYT's Steven Yaccino, Jennifer Preston, and Serge F. Kovalevski are reporting:

Mr. Page, 40, a United States Army veteran who served from 1992 until 1998, was shot and killed by the police in the parking lot of the Sikh Temple of Wisconsin in suburban Milwaukee.

Officials at the Southern Poverty Law Center said they had been tracking Mr. Page for about a decade because of his ties to the white supremacist movement and they described him as "a frustrated neo-Nazi who had been the leader of a racist white-power band."

They said he played guitar and sang vocals for a band started in 2005 called End Apathy.

"This guy was in the thick of the white supremacist music scene and, in fact, played with some of the best known racist bands in the country," said Mark Potok, a senior fellow at the center. "The music that comes from these bands is incredibly violent and it talks about murdering Jews, black people, gay people and a whole host of other enemies. It is music that could not be sold over the counter around the country."

In other reports (like this one from CLG) we're told that according to the Pentagon, while in the Army Page was a "psychological operations specialist."

The NYT team has in fact assembled quite a lot of other information about the shooter; and about the Sikh Temple of Wisconsin (which "began with 20 to 25 families in Milwaukee in 1997 and grew over the years to more than 300 people," and opened its 17,500-square-foot building in Oak Creek, with libraries and classrooms, in 2007) and the victims themselves, including Satwant Singh Kaleka, 65, the temple's founder and president, who is one of the deceased); and about the timeline of the terrible event.

One thing the team is unable to report on is the shooter's motive, about which Oak Creek Police Chief John Edwards had nothing to offer. At this point we don't know how much more we'll learn, but I don't think it's a wild or impermissible stretch to guess that the information provided by those SPLC officials, who have "been tracking Mr. Page for about a decade because of his ties to the white supremacist movement" and "described him as 'a frustrated neo-Nazi who had been the leader of a racist white-power [musical] band' " is going to wind up figuring in it.

The NYT team does have a bit more personal information, from an interview with the alleged shooter’s stepmother, Laura Page, 67, of Denver, who

expressed shock at the news that the boy she had known since he was 10 years old could be behind such a crime. "I can't imagine, I can't imagine what made him do this," she said.

She said that he grew up with his mother, a dog groomer, in the Denver area until she died when he was 12 or 13. Then he went to live with an aunt and a grandmother in Colorado.

After high school, he enlisted in the Army. "I think that he felt that he was misdirected and that the service helped him find a direction in life," she said, saying that after he joined the Army he did not keep in regular contact.

Personally, I'm prepared to wait for more actual fact, and am not all that concerned about the day-late release of information that presumably was available last night. Something does concern me, though, and already concerned me last night.

If the religious center that had been assaulted had been a gathering place for good white Christians, would there not have been a thundering response fomented by the Right-Wing Noise Machine in which good Americans would have been calling for bombing, well, someplace or other -- would it really matter where? Do good Americans know the difference between one foreign place and another? Or care?

Of course the Right has learned the hard way to be just a little careful about popping off too much too soon -- perhaps the only lesson mainstream American learned from the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing, when the Noise Machine had blood-lusting, fake-patriotic Americans all set to bomb all those damn Islamic terrorists into oblivion, at least until we began to learn that the assault on the Murrah Federal Building was in fact an attack on the federal government by far-right-wing American superpatriots. At which point any talk of revenge or reprisals ceased immediately and permanently. You might have thought there might at least have been some public interest in the growing network of armed far-right-wing superpatriot groups. You would have been wrong.

Today fake-patriotic right-wing Christian delusionalists and outright liars have become fond of making believe that Christianity is under siege. It's a fable that, on a scale of zero to a kajillion, has less-than-zero basis in reality. But of course fake-patriotic Americans are also at war with reality.

Yesterday, in a country that was founded on -- among other cardinal principles -- a religious group was for real attacked, with pretty good reason to assume that it was for no reason other than the targets "otherness." Even without knowing who was responsible, or why, you'd think that might have been enough to provoke a storm of outrage from the defenders of religious freedom. I sure didn't hear those voices.

I'm sure we'll be hearing from them real soon. Aren't you?

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"The opposite of [religious] questioning is not deep belief but arrested develoment" (Garry Wills)

In this Moment of Clarity, Lee Camp asks: "Should Hearing
from God Disqualify You From Running for President?"

I'm really tired of political goons claiming that "God" told them to run for office or go to war or go to the bathroom. First of all, if it were a God, he or she wouldn't want anything to do with this Ringling Bros. Barnum & Bailey clusterfuck that we have going here. Motto: "The Greatest Puppet Show on Earth." . . .

Rick Santorum says that God told him to run for president because Satan is trying to take down America. Apparently this God of his thoroughly hates gays, women, black people, Latinos, everybody earning under 100 grand a year, and considering evangelicals only act friendly to the Jews because they believe all the Jews need to be in Israel in order to bring about Judgment Day, in which the Jews will burn in a fiery Hell for eternity, I'm going to go ahead and add the Jews to that list. Santorum's God despises all of those people. What a douchebag Lord! If you had ten kids and treated nine of them like shit, people would call you a dickface to your face, and yet that guy somehow landed the job of God? They need to get some new people in the HR department, for Christ's sake.

Mitt Romney belongs to a religion that believes in magic underwear. How weird is this shit gonna get? I let it slide with the magic crackers, the magic wand, the magic facial hair, the magic shroud, the magic skulls, the magic hats. But there is nothing magic about a wedgie. . . .

The actor Jimmy Stewart starred in a well-known movie called Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, in which he's elected to office. He starred in another famous movie in which an imaginary giant white rabbit talked to him and told him what to do. Let's stop combining the two when we're picking a president.

"I believe in an America where religious intolerance will someday end; where all men and all churches are treated as equal; where every man has the same right to attend or not attend the church of his choice; where there is no Catholic vote, no anti-Catholic vote, no bloc voting of any kind; and where Catholics, Protestants and Jews, at both the lay and the pastoral level, will refrain from those attitudes of disdain and division which have so often marred their works in the past, and promote instead the American ideal of brotherhood."

-- John F. Kennedy, recalled in Kathleen Kennedy Townsend's WaPo
op-ed "What Rick Santorum doesn't understand about JFK"

"Minds grow by questioning things, and adolescence is a great period of questions. . . . An unquestioned faith is not faith but rote recitation. The opposite of such questioning is not deep belief but arrested development."

-- Garry Wills, in a new New York Review of Books
blogpost, "Santorum’s Arrested Development"

by Ken

It's hardly coincidental that the Vatican has finally dropped the inevitable cardinal's beanie on the frothing wacko plucked out of the diocese of Bridgeport by Pope John Paul II in 2000 to oversee the country's still-prime archdiocese, New York. It's just in time to lend the weight of that red beanie to the sustained campaign of slathering poison over the American body politic which will be Eddie Egan's contribution to this U.S. electoral cycle.

Religious craziness is hardly the only craziness now polluting our political discourse. About 98 percent of what has come out of the mouths of would-be Republican presidential candidates has been the sort of thing that would once have qualified them for intensive institutional care but now is accepted with hardly a blush as normal subject matter. But the religious bullying carries a special quality of intimidation, claiming as it does spiritual force, and never mind that the people professing these higherly-called imperatives have absolutely no claim to moral superiority. Indeed, when you take an even slightly closer look at most of these people, you often find it hard to discern that might be considered remotely moral.

(It was astonishing that, when it was finally revealed many years later that Ma and Pa Santorum brought their dead fetus home for the live Santorum kiddies to play with, this was accepted as a demonstration of perhaps slightly excessive religious faith rather than stark staring insanity, which should have occasioned some sort of intervention on behalf of the junior Santorums by the appropriate child protection services.)

But no, Santorum's insanity -- and I mean literal insanity, not just the driveling preposterousness of everything that comes out of his mouth -- gets cover for his supposedly deep faith. We Americans don't like to question people's faith. So I was inordinately cheered a a couple of weeks ago when as deep a thinker and as knowledgeable a Catholic as Garry Wills, in a NYRB blogpost called "Contraception's Con Men" which I've been meaning to write about, wrote, under the subhead "The Phony 'Church Teaches' Argument":

Catholics who do not accept the phony argument over contraception are said to be “going against the teachings of their church.” That is nonsense. They are their church. The Second Vatican Council defines the church as “the people of God.” Thinking that the pope is the church is a relic of the days when a monarch was said to be his realm. The king was “Denmark.” Catholics have long realized that their own grasp of certain things, especially sex, has a validity that is lost on the celibate male hierarchy. This is particularly true where celibacy is concerned. . . .

Before I could get around to writing about that post, in which Wills traces the tawdry behind-the-scenes politics of the Church's narrowly retained official position on contraception, it was overtaken by this new Wills blogpost, "Santorum's Arrested Development," responding to the imbecile blithering about college "elitism," focusing particularly on the nonsensical argument that colleges are engaged in a warn on children's religious faith. "Of course," he writes,

the idea that colleges are stealing people's children from their parents' God is an old belief on the right wing. William Buckley proclaimed it in his God and Man at Yale, published over half a century ago, in the 1950s surge of religiosity that some conservatives now look back on with nostalgia. Of course, as Catholics, Buckley and Santorum (and I) are heirs to a long tradition of trying to control what people think or read or see. When I was young, the list of movies we were forbidden to see was posted every Sunday in the vestibule of our church. The priests who taught me in high school sent me and my fellows out to drug stores to demand that "dirty" magazines like Esquire be removed from their stands. There was still an Index of Forbidden Books we are supposed not to read -- including works by Milton, Rousseau, Voltaire, Sartre, Gide -- without a priest’s permission.

Wills is lying in wait for the Santorum claim "that 62 percent of people who go to college lose their 'faith commitment' there." He takes note of "a 2007 report that found even greater decline among those who don’t attend college," then continues:

I do not know how one measures such things, but I think it inevitable that questioning of childhood beliefs should take place at various stages of adolescence. This does not happen in junior year or senior year on campus. It is part of a long process called growing up.

At some point, late or early, children disengage themselves from the stories crafted for them. Their loss of belief in the tooth fairy is only slightly behind their loss of teeth. There is a slow motion race to disappear between Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny. The Stork undergoes, for some, a lengthier demise -- and "the birds and the bees" do not long outlast it. Others, I hope, soon disabuse themselves of belief in their parents' infallibility. Certain religious myths are discarded without necessarily losing faith. That I do not believe in Noah's Ark does not mean that I must stop believing in God -- though certain home schooling parents force that connection on their kids.

Minds grow by questioning things, and adolescence is a great period of questions. Mark Twain and H. L. Mencken learned to cross-examine the Bible all on their own, without any help at all from college. An unquestioned faith is not faith but rote recitation. The opposite of such questioning is not deep belief but arrested development.

So Santorum has mistaken his enemy. It is not colleges that steal his kids from him, but growth, especially the wrenching growths of adolescence. He should get at root causes. Abolish adolescence. I am sure modern science, with the help of hormonal retardants, could make this practicable in most cases. Of course, it would wipe out the human race. But perhaps a tested few, home schooled to insure arrested development in all other matters, could be permitted to grow up and breed. And we know they would breed prolifically, denied all contraceptives.

I suppose you could say that abolishing adolescence is in good part what the 21st-century Right is aiming to do, if by adolescence we understand a period when humans develop their sense of the world around them and their relationship to it.

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