Rep. Allen West (R-Fla.) says he’s heard that almost half of all the Democrats in Congress are secretly part of the Communist Party.

He offered no names or proof of his accusation.

West told almost 100 Floridians in Palm City on Tuesday that “he’s [...]]]> How on earth did this idiot get be a Congressman?

Rep. Allen West (R-Fla.) says he’s heard that almost half of all the Democrats in Congress are secretly part of the Communist Party.

He offered no names or proof of his accusation.

West told almost 100 Floridians in Palm City on Tuesday that “he’s heard” as many as 80 Democrats in Congress are members of the Communist Party, according to the Palm Beach Post.

This is so depressing. It would be silly enough to accuse a bunch of Democrats of having secret socialist sympathies, but it’s an entirely whole new level of crazy to claim that there are dozens of actual, card carrying members of the Communist Party in Congress. Just how dumb do you need to be to believe this crap?

What’s worse is it’s likely that a majority of the constituents who voted for him believe it too, or at the very least believe it to be possible. After all, many of them believe that when Barack Obama is done being a secret Muslim Nazi during his day job, he attends midnight Communist Party strategy sessions on how to bring down America from within.

It might be funny if this type of belief wasn’t so pervasive amongst conservative voters. I mean, how on Earth can you even begin to have a rational debate over the future of country when millions of Americans believe that a large number of Democrats harbor secret plans to foment violent revolution in the streets and turn the nation into the Soviet Socialist States of America?  Not only is it not rational to believe this sort of nonsense, it is profoundly irrational. From a scale of one to ten, well, it’s off the deep end.

SOMETIMES THE NEW YORK TIMES MAKES ME LAUGH. HERE’S THE HUMOROUS HEADLINE FROM SUNDAY’S PAPER: “ISLAMIST GROUP BREAKS PLEDGE TO STAY OUT OF RACE IN EGYPT.”

IN OTHER WORDS, MUSLIMS LIE, JUST AS THEY ARE INSTRUCTED [...]]]> I happened to hear Cal Thomas’ daily commentary earlier today (April 3rd) and all I can say is “Ugh!”

SOMETIMES THE NEW YORK TIMES MAKES ME LAUGH. HERE’S THE HUMOROUS HEADLINE FROM SUNDAY’S PAPER: “ISLAMIST GROUP BREAKS PLEDGE TO STAY OUT OF RACE IN EGYPT.”

IN OTHER WORDS, MUSLIMS LIE, JUST AS THEY ARE INSTRUCTED TO DO TO INFIDELS BY THEIR KORAN. I HAVE PREDICTED THAT THE MUSLIM BROTHERHOOD WANTED TO TAKE OVER EGYPT AND FOR THAT MATTER THE REST OF ARAB COUNTRIES. FEW WOULD LISTEN AND NO ONE AT THE STATE DEPARTMENT APPEARS TO BE LISTENING. THEY THINK DIPLOMACY AND SHOWING MUSLIMS ALL THE MOSQUES WE HAVE ALLOWED IN AMERCA WILL MAKE A DIFFERENCE AND THEY WILL DECIDE NOT TO KILL US HERE IN AMERICA.

THOSE WHO BELIEVE THIS ARE FOOLS. YES, YOU HEARD ME. THEY ARE FOOLS. MUSLIMS PERSECUTE AND KILL JEWS AND CHRISTIANS IN THEIR COUNTRIES. WHAT MAKES US THINK BEING NICE WILL MAKE THEM PERSECUITE LESS, OR CEASE FROM WHAT THEY BELIEVE IS THEIR MANDATE FROM ALLAH TO CONTROL THE WORLD?

THAT ISN’T “ISLAMOPHOBIA,” AS MY CRITICS CLAIM. IT IS WHAT MANY OF THEIR LEADERS SAY. GROUPS LIKE CAIR CANNOT AND WILL NOT DENY IT. I’M CAL THOMAS IN WASHINGTON.

(Spelling mistakes are in the original, and for the life of me I don’t understand why they need to publish the transcripts capitalized and in bold. It’s as if they don’t know it brands him as being nothing more than the stereotypical religious fundamentalist ignoramus.)

Reading the transcript made me cringe as much as I did when I heard it originally, and if his diatribe not an example of “Islamophobia” then the word has no meaning. It would be hard for anyone to cram more incendiary paranoia into a minute of broadcast time.

He opens with an “I told you so” whine about  the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood reneging on its pledge not to run a candidate in the upcoming Presidential election in that country. Does he really think the New York Times is surprised that this has happened? I would be shocked if any serious observer of Middle Eastern politics had ruled out this development, yet Thomas believes himself to be a voice in the wilderness?

And unless Cal Thomas is a mind-reader, how does he know that they were always planning to run a candidate? Perhaps they made the pledge in good faith but then decided it would be more advantageous to them, to break the pledge and run. It’s not as though it’s never happened before. (“Read my lips…”)

But even if those dastardly Muslims were lying… “Stop the press!”– politicians lie! Politicians lie all the time. Muslim politicians lie. Mormon politicians lie. Christian politicians lie. Show me a politician and I will show you a liar. It doesn’t matter what religion they profess to adhere to.

Of course, Thomas isn’t satisfied with such mundane explanations. It all has to be part of a dark, nefarious plot to take over the entire world. (Cue deranged Dr. Evil cackle.) How do we know this? Well, says Thomas, we know this because that’s how all Muslims are told to think ergo, that’s what they must be thinking. (But, no, no, it’s not Islamophobia to believe that all Muslims want to take over the world, it’s all just a perfectly reasonable inference on iron-clad evidence… honest…).

But what if the Muslim Brotherhood, or Muslims in general, really do want to take over the world? Ignoring the fact that there isn’t any evidence beyond the usual religious rhetoric and empty threats from radical groups in no position to take over anything, what are the odds that any Muslim nation, or group of nations, will ever be in any position to carry out their supposed commandment to take over the world? Getting hold of a few nuclear weapons isn’t going to cut it, not when even a tiny country like Israel has enough fire power to annihilate a dozen Muslim nations at the press of a button. Even if it was the avowed intent of a large number of Muslims to take over the world for Allah, the threat would not be a credible one.

Ironically, if Muslims do yearn for the day when Islam reigns supreme over all the Earth, it’s nothing that millions of Christians haven’t done many times over the last two thousand years, and still do today. How does Cal Thomas think Christianity became the dominant religion in so many parts of the world — most of Africa, and all of Europe, North and South America? It wasn’t through love and gentle persuasion, that’s for sure.

Police captured a suspect in a shooting at a California religious college that resulted in “multiple fatalities” Monday, an Oakland police spokeswoman said.

A SWAT team entered Oikos University in East Oakland to [...]]]> News is just coming in of yet another horrific school shooting, this time at the Oikos University in Oakland, California:

Police captured a suspect in a shooting at a California religious college that resulted in “multiple fatalities” Monday, an Oakland police spokeswoman said.

A SWAT team entered Oikos University in East Oakland to make sure no other shooters or wounded people were on the campus building, police spokeswoman Johnna Watson said.

“We are interviewing the witnesses right now to try to determine if this person is known to them,” Watson said, shortly before confirming that a suspect was in custody.

This is already the sixth such incident this year, following on from ten more last year, and that’s only including shootings that have occurred on school premises.

Now, these tragedies can and do happen anywhere in the world, but for some reason they are occurring much more frequently in the United States than they do in other countries–especially when compared with other wealthy democratic nations. Here, they are becoming an almost monthly occurrence, whereas in most other countries such shootings happen only once in a generation, if that.

The question is why?

The NRA and other gun advocates like to claim that too much gun control is the problem, yet how do they explain the fact that America already has by far the highest gun ownership and the loosest gun control laws of all western democratic nations.

Some conservatives love to point the finger of blame at liberals, lefties, and socialists for the breakdown of civil society, yet America is almost certainly the most conservative democratic nation on the planet, and the vast majority of those much more liberal nations in Europe don’t have anywhere near the same problems with mass killings as America does.

Is it because America is not tough enough on crime? Well, when you’re already the toughest nation on crime in the world by a considerable margin then that argument should not even pass the laugh test. Sadly, too few people realize just how much more punitive American society is compared to every other democratic nation in the world.

I don’t claim to have the whole answer, but I don’t think you can ignore the differences between American society and those of similar nations that don’t have mass shootings on a monthly basis, and the biggest one that jumps out to me is the sheer volume of firearms in America. According to this table in Wikipedia, America is number one with 89 guns per 100 people, far ahead of the number two country, Serbia (which was recently at war) with 58 guns per 100 people, and Yemen (a war-torn dictatorship) at number three, and with the exceptions of Switzerland (46) and Cyprus (36), no other stable democratic nation has more than 32 guns per 100 people.

Therefore America is by far the most heavily armed society in the world, and absent very strict gun control laws, it doesn’t seem surprising to me that America also has the highest murder rate amongst stable wealthy democratic nations as well as the highest number of gun-related deaths. I get that a majority of Americans believe that they have a constitutional right to bear arms, but that doesn’t necessarily mean that 21st century America is a safer society because of that right. The America of today is nothing like the America of the 1791 when the Bill of Rights was adopted, and it’s ludicrous to claim that what was good for American society back then is automatically good for American society today, especially given how much safer many other countries are, even though they have far fewer guns.

I also believe that the mass criminalization of Americans through its punitive criminal justice system and the War on Drugs play a part. When you have to imprison seven times the number of citizens as France does (another country with a large immigrant population) then you’re doing something wrong, and when you refuse to invest any significant time or money into the rehabilitation of offenders because you think they don’t deserve any help with our tax dollars, you’re only storing up more trouble for later.

Of course, nothing is ever simple. Getting the guns off the street and out of the hands of those who might use them to kill people is next to impossible in a society that believes that almost everyone should have a right to bear arms. Arming even more people in an effort to counter the number of guns out there simply means that there are more people out there with guns that can either be stolen or used by owners who go off the rails. There are also a limited number of Americans who are capable of using a firearm correctly and accurately enough to save lives when they are under fire themselves. Even trained policemen have trouble shooting straight when under extreme duress. Arming lots more people is not a good solution.

So, what to do? I’m open to suggestions, but I don’t see an easy fix. Perhaps 30 years ago there could have been a sensible debate over guns, but these days the gun lobby is still spreading paranoia about the government wanting to take away their guns even though they have already effectively crushed all opposition to such laws. No politician in a competitive district dares even to bring up the subject these days.

There is a little more hope in the criminal justice arena, where some, more libertarian conservatives are beginning to realize that spending billions to lock up millions of Americans for years is a stain on the reputation of America as being “The Land of the Free.” Some are also beginning to worry about the cost of the ever increasing prison population. But without a wholesale buy-in to reforming the criminal justice system and implementing effective rehabilitation of ex-offenders–not treating them all like pariahs for the rest of their lives would help too–then I don’t see how we make many strides there either.

It’s all very depressing, and I don’t see much changing for as long as America refuses to look at the things that do work in other countries. It’s popular in some circles to trash anything that was “not invented here” these days. The shameless mocking of the Norwegian prison system was one recent example (“their prisons are like five star hotels”) even though they are over three times more effective than the American system when it comes to reforming offenders. We’re just shooting ourselves in the foot, knee, and groin, if we keep on doing that.

The bottom line is that there are consequences to living in a heavily armed society, and one of those consequences these days is monthly mass shootings in our nation’s schools. Gun advocates need to stop running away and face up to that fact. Perhaps then we can start having a sensible conversation about what to do about it.

There wasn’t exactly an avalanche of press about the event, but there was some, and it was enough to send the usual suspects scurrying to [...]]]> The Reason Rally was held in Washington DC this past weekend, and by all accounts (from the people who were actually there), a good time was had by all.

There wasn’t exactly an avalanche of press about the event, but there was some, and it was enough to send the usual suspects scurrying to scoff about the numbers and fret about the incivility of some of the speakers and signs seen there. Kelly Boggs of the Baptist Press was one such commentator:

The crowd was estimated by the Religion News Service to be between 8,000 to 10,000. USA Today indicated the number of those gathered was closer to 20,000.

If this was “the largest secular event in world history,” the movement, it would seem, has some work to do.

A rather gentle scoff, no doubt, but the message is clear–not terribly impressive numbers for a movement taking the national stage.

And, in some ways, he’s correct. Even 20,000 people isn’t exactly gangbusters when the Pope can draw ten times that number to a venue any time he visits the States, but to pass judgment on the state of health of the non-believing community in the USA by the size of the crowd at a single rally is to greatly underestimate our reach and influence.

Atheists are not, and never will be unified behind a single cause that will sweep across the nation. No matter what the scoffers claim, atheism isn’t a religion unified behind a single person or creed, and that makes it very difficult to organize events that will draw, say, a hundred thousand non-believers.

For example, the Reason Rally lineup was hardly likely to hold great appeal for the many conservative atheists out there, given that most of the speakers were liberals, and included outspoken critics of the Republican Party like Bill Maher and Penn Jillette (a libertarian). It is also true that many atheists are opposed to actively speaking out against religion, preferring instead to allow demographics and the course of history to bring an end to the power of religious conservatives. (That has certainly worked in other countries, like the UK.)

Yet, despite the lack of a significant organized secular movement of atheists in America, it would be unwise to dismiss the rise of overt secularism as a flash in the pan, for two reasons.

Firstly, the only reason why it was hailed as the “the largest secular event in world history” (a hyperbolic turn of phrase, to be sure) is because in most other nominally Christian countries, such events are simply not necessary. In places like Scandinavia, the UK, Germany, and even Spain and Ireland, it is not the atheists and other non-believers who are a small, marginalized community, it is the fundamentalist Christians. Religion doesn’t drive public policy, science and reason do–not that they always get it right, of course–and the religious beliefs of their national leaders matter not one wit, and all this happened without a single mass march of non-believers. America may be bucking the world-spanning trend away from fundamentalist forms of Christianity, but in this age of social media and instant communications, it would seem unlikely that it can hold out forever.

Secondly, “secular events” are already a dime a dozen here in the USA–i.e. events where science and reason are the name of the game, and religion plays an extremely peripheral role, if it plays any at all.

Of course, I mean any non-religious gathering where the either science and reason, or the fruits of science and reason, are used:

• space launches viewings
• performances by Tim Minchin, Eddie Izzard and other comedians who comment on religious issues
• watching a Myth Busters TV show or the science programming of PBS
• the hundreds of academic conferences and conventions held each year
• political rallies opposing religion-based government policies
• any major league sports game (more science than art these days)

…and I could go on.

Few of these events makes an explicit appeal to reason or rationality, and many of the participants and attendees are religious to one degree or another, but they are all signs that secular values, free thought, and rationalism are thriving today in America even if there isn’t an official organization of atheists capable of filling the Washington Mall leading the way.

Pat Robertson came out today in the New York Times as an advocate of the decriminalization of marijuana:

Of the many roles Pat Robertson has assumed over his five-decade-long career as an evangelical leader — including presidential candidate and provocative voice of the right wing — [...]]]> You know what they say about stopped clocks…

Pat Robertson came out today in the New York Times as an advocate of the decriminalization of marijuana:

Of the many roles Pat Robertson has assumed over his five-decade-long career as an evangelical leader — including presidential candidate and provocative voice of the right wing — his newest guise may perhaps surprise his followers the most: marijuana legalization advocate.

“I really believe we should treat marijuana the way we treat beverage alcohol,” Mr. Robertson said in an interview on Wednesday. “I’ve never used marijuana and I don’t intend to, but it’s just one of those things that I think: this war on drugs just hasn’t succeeded.”

(Note: Robertson’s own comments would imply that he supports full legalization, but his spokesman later said that he’s only backing decriminalization.)

Mr. Robertson, 81, said that there had been no single event or moment that caused him to embrace legalization. Instead, his conviction that the nation “has gone overboard on this concept of being tough on crime” built up over time, he added.

“It’s completely out of control,” Mr. Robertson said. “Prisons are being overcrowded with juvenile offenders having to do with drugs. And the penalties, the maximums, some of them could get 10 years for possession of a joint of marijuana. It makes no sense at all.”

He’s right, of course, I just wish he’d gotten there thirty years sooner. The whole “tough on crime” stance that has been a mainstay of conservative American politics since the 1980s has certainly helped to make America somewhat safer in the short term, but it’s come at a terrible price, with millions of non-violent citizens thrown on the scrap heap that this the American prison system.

Sadly, it’s clear that Robertson doesn’t really get this:

He attributed much of the problem of overpopulated jails to a “liberal mindset to have an all-encompassing government.”

I have debated this issue with enough liberals and conservatives to know that it is not the liberal mindset that is the problem. Liberals are not the ones responsible for this particular blight on the American nation. They aren’t the ones who blast any small attempt at reforming the judicial system as being “soft on crime.” Even arch-conservative Grover Norquist understands this:

Unfortunately, the ideological pendulum then swung too far in the other direction. Conservative reformers brandishing the phrase “tough on crime” tackled misconduct by incarcerating more people and giving them longer sentences. The new conventional wisdom was that rehabilitation never worked — so why even try?

This attitude led America to our current situation. Today, 2.3 million people sit in U.S. prisons — nearly one in every 100 adult Americans. America has the highest known incarceration rate in the world. Many of the incarcerated are guilty of non-violent crimes and afflicted with drug or mental-health problems, for which they receive little treatment, even when full rehabilitation is possible.

When I repeat these statistics to some of my conservative friends, they still fail to see the problem. “If they do the crime, they must do the time,” they tell me. The contrast was thrown into even higher relief in the aftermath of Anders Breivik’s murderous rampage in Norway, when conservatives took the time to mock the Norwegian criminal justice system with its “lenient sentencing” and “five star prisons.”

Buried under the mountain-sized sense of outrage that a mass-murderer might one day be released back onto the streets, is the simple fact that when it comes to protecting its citizens, the Norwegian justice system is one of the best in the world. Their focus on prisoner rehabilitation and reform results in a recidivism rate of just 20%. This is in stark contrast to America, where as many as two-thirds of all ex-cons are rearrested within five years of being released. Not only is that more than three times as many repeat offenders as in Norway, but it’s over three times as many victims too, a completely unnecessary toll on American society that is driven by the overarching need of conservatives to punish wrongdoers as severely as possible.

The USA now incarcerates five times as many of its own citizens as any other mature, democratic nation on the planet. That’s not 50% more, but 500% more. Americans, who are forever boasting that they live in the “Land of the Free” even imprison people at a higher rate than the corrupt and borderline totalitarian Chinese and Russians do.

I am glad that people like Pat Robertson and Grover Norquist are finally seeing the light, but we are merely scratching the surface of what is possibly the most intractable problem in America today. Decriminalizing drug use is an excellent start, but little short of a complete overhaul of the way Americans view and tackle the issue of crime and punishment will suffice in the long run. There is no reason why the USA cannot adopt and adapt the proven measures that other countries have implemented–e.g. Norway and its prisoner rehabilitation programs, and Portugal and its revolutionary drug-treatment programs–only the political will is lacking. Unfortunately, that is the most difficult problem of all to solve, and it won’t be solved until there are many more conservatives, like Norquist and Robertson, who are willing to make the call for a change.

After enduring what was without doubt the toughest day of [...]]]> If one could sum up the place of religion in American politics in one short clip, then it would be tough to do better than show Herman Cain breaking out into song at the end of his speech at the National Press Club yesterday:

After enduring what was without doubt the toughest day of his campaign, what better way to reassure his supporters of his innocence and resoluteness in the face of the sexual harassment charges and to remind them of the deep Christian faith he shares with them, than to sing something written by Dottie Rambo, the patron saint of emotive spiritual songs in the evangelical community?

What is amazing is the contrast between that and, say, the last General Election in the UK, where the religious beliefs of the three main candidates for Prime Minister, David Cameron, Gordon Brown, and Nick Clegg, went almost completely unremarked upon by the press and by the candidates themselves, and played no factor in outcome of the election (even though Nick Clegg is a self-professed atheist).

If any of them had broken into song the way Herman Cain did, it would have been dismissed as naked pandering, at best, and a worst, it would have disqualified them as suitable material for the role as Prime Minister in the eyes of a majority of British voters.

Of course, nothing Herman Cain does comes close to naked cynical use of religion Newt Gingrich has had to employ just to get himself into a position to run for the Republican nomination (with a large assist from the Catholic Church). Ironically, it’s Newt Gingrich who likely stands to benefit the most from Herman Cain’s recent travails. It’s possible that in a couple of months we’ll be missing the time when Cain used his folksy religious shorthand to establish his conservative credentials.

I spoke to a feisty Rick Perry this morning who said he agreed with his wife’s comments that his campaign has [...]]]> Apparently, Rick Perry and his wife now believe that the word “persecution” is wholly inadequate for the terrible way in which he has been roughed up by his opponents this Republican Primary season:

I spoke to a feisty Rick Perry this morning who said he agreed with his wife’s comments that his campaign has been “brutalized” because of his Christianity and Perry came out of the gates attacking Herman Cain’s now famous 9-9-9 plan.

“I’ll stand by my wife. I think she’s right on both cases. My understanding is that she said I’m the most conservative candidate in the race and ‘he’s a Christian.’ So I haven’t got anything I can add to that and she’s hit me on my mark both times there,” Perry said on “GMA.”

While campaigning for her husband in South Carolina Anita Perry said “We are being brutalized by our opponents and our own party. So much of that is, I think they look at him because of his faith. He’s the only true conservative. Well, there are some conservatives. And they’re there for good reasons.”

Seriously?

Clearly this is just sour grapes in response to Governor Goodhair’s poll numbers plunging off a cliff after a string of inept performances in the debates, but it doesn’t even make any sense given that every candidate whose name is not Mitt Romney is bending over backwards to demonstrate just how ultra-conservative and God-fearing they are.

But it certainly does fit the pattern of anointing oneself a martyr for your faith that Christian conservatives love to indulge in. Any criticism of their faith, no matter how mild, is cause for accusations of religious persecution, and we hear them so often that the p-word isn’t enough anymore, and hence the word “brutalized” is trotted out instead.

If nothing else, this type of language completely trivializes the real religious persecution that millions of Christians face elsewhere in the world, where people risk imprisonment, injury, and even death for practicing what they believe. Contrast that with American Christians–probably the wealthiest, most privileged and powerful bunch of believers on Earth outside the Vatican.

Hint: someone in the press calling your debate performances poor and unimpressive doesn’t count as religious persecution.

Pathetic, the lot of them.

(CNN) — A federal judge on Thursday struck down the federal statute that established the National Day of Prayer, ruling that it violates the constitutional ban on government-backed religion.

“[I]ts sole purpose is to encourage all citizens to engage in prayer, an inherently religious exercise that serves no secular function,” a [...]]]> Well I never.

(CNN) — A federal judge on Thursday struck down the federal statute that established the National Day of Prayer, ruling that it violates the constitutional ban on government-backed religion.

“[I]ts sole purpose is to encourage all citizens to engage in prayer, an inherently religious exercise that serves no secular function,” a Wisconsin judge wrote in the ruling, referring to the 1952 law that created the National Day of Prayer.

“In this instance, the government has taken sides on a matter that must be left to individual conscience,” wrote the judge, Barbara B. Crabb.

So, in the time it took for me to (almost) finish my taxes, the story changes from the silly email rumor that President Obama has canceled the National Day of Prayer to a federal court ruling that declares the 1952 National Day of Prayer statute unconstitutional!

Now, nothing is actually going to happen between now and May 6th since the statute will stand until all avenues of appeal are exhausted, and President Obama has already stated that he will be issuing the proclamation on scheduled, but this is going to drive the conservative Christians to apoplexy nonetheless.

Should be fun.

For the record, while I agree with the judge’s ruling (prayer is an inherently religious exercise and the federal government should stay out of it) I fully expect it to be overturned on appeal, with the appellant judges citing some sort of vague ceremonial tradition as the reason why the statute should stand—just as they did in various Ten Commandments monument-related cases.

In fact, given that this will give the religious right all the excuse they need to kick up an even bigger fuss about activist judges and the perceived persecution of Christians, I would have actually preferred it if the Freedom From Religion Foundation had not brought the suit. Ceremonial stuff like National Day of Prayer proclamations, religious mottoes on our money, and moldy old religious monuments stuffed away in the corner of a courthouse yard are the type of thing that people don’t pay much attention to anyway, secular or religious, and filing lawsuits against them does nothing but keep the religious fundamentalists fired up, engaged, and ready to fight.

I grew up in Britain during the time when Christianity went from being a dominant force in British life to being almost irrelevant.  That didn’t happen because atheists and non-believers fought tooth and nail to overthrow the established order. It happened though benign neglect. The shrinking religious minority found it very hard to get fired up about the gradual atrophy and decay of their religious institutions.

I would prefer the secularists and the separationists to keep their powder dry for things that really matter, like efforts to teach creationism in school, or attempts to proselytize students in public school, etc. But, what’s done is done, and no doubt Fox News pundits everywhere are lining up a gaggle of guests to express their righteous outrage at the court’s decision.

All Obama has done is decided against holding [...]]]> Er, actually no he didn’t. Despite what the conservative Christian hysteria machine would have you believe, on May 6th, the National Day of Prayer will be recognized by President Obama by issuing a proclamation just as all his predecessors have done since its inauguration in 1952.

All Obama has done is decided against holding a prayer service in the White House on that day, an event was only started under the last president as a rather empty political gesture to his evangelical Christian constituency. And, by the way, he didn’t hold an NDP service in the White House last year either, so it’s not like this should be shocking news to anyone.

That decision President Obama made last year made Shirley Dobson cry:

Naturally, prominent evangelicals, including National Day of Prayer Task Force Chairman Shirley Dobson, and her husband, Focus on the Family founder James Dobson, expressed disappointment in Obama’s decision.

“At this time in our country’s history, we would hope our president would recognize more fully the importance of prayer,” Shirley Dobson said in a statement.

I suspect that in the three weeks between now and May 6th, the outrage of the religious right will serve to prove that the President did the right thing by returning to the usual practice of just issuing a proclamation. Thanks mostly to the efforts of Dobson’s sectarian NDP Task Force, the day, and the celebration of the day had become little more than a political football in the hands of the religious right.

Conservative Christians everywhere will be able to pray to their heart’s content on May 6th (or any other day), whether or not the current president panders to their wishes.

Update: Corrected post to reflect that Dobson’s quote was actually made before last year’s NDP.