We need to really examine what morality is about and what actually drives our moral arguments, particularly as Republicans are lining up with the Religious Right (of which Mormons are a part)and giving lip-service to "moral values" and baying on as if liberals and Democrats had none. This is really a matter of some annoyance for me. The words "family values' and "moral values" are in fact a code for an unthinking, unquestioned set of rules we're calling morality but has little to do with it. From what I can tell, the morality of the Religious Right could be spelled out like this:

Don't drink.

Don't smoke.

Don't use foul language.

Don't have sex out of wedlock.

Don't be gay.

Don't abort if you are pregnant.

Don't let gays marry.

If you agree with those positions, you're considered a "moral" person with "values".

The truth is you're just "playing by the rules"in expectation of some reward. This sort of "thou shalt not" morality is actually quite hollow and allows for all sorts of other things that one might consider "immoral". Like intolerance, bigotry, hubris, and hypocrisy. The Pharisees of Jesus' time played by the rules very well. They were scholars at it. They were so good at it that they advocated for Jesus' execution because he had a much broader and deeper morality in mind when he said, "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you" and "Love one another as yourselves". It didn't exactly square with their need to be "righteous". Even today, Christian conservatives think this is "soft" and "weak". They prefer to be "righteous" when all they are is just self-righteous. This core difference needs to be exposed, highlighted and debated. I don't think we can afford to get this wrong anymore. It's starting to affect how we function as a country as recent events have shown.

What in the unholy crimson hell does THAT mean?

The "matrix that says things are getting better" is "less violence, I guess"?

D-UH!!

Strictly speaking, we'd all like to see less violence, not more, in Iraq. That might actually be comforting. But if the president, and by extension the rest of us, are going to use the "less violence" standard, then by that standard, WE ARE LOSING.

Using body counts makes no sense because that only shows that violence is increasing, not decreasing. Besides which, if the report the other week about this war having killed more than half a million Iraqis is any indication, people are alarmed and dismayed and reports of more dead, US soldiers and Iraqi civilians are only going to turn more people AGAINST the war, and AGAINST the administration's prosecution of the war. That's already happening as recent polls show. But it would be just like the Bushies to continue digging when they're already in a hole, and then to defend it with rhetoric like "staying the course", and straw man arguments like "some people believe there isn't a war going on."

Stop insulting our intelligence!

Rush Limbaugh is a big fat idiot!

The more shocking thing is that "his audience" is willing to sink to this level to uphold an agenda that has failed. So willing that they will continue to shove money at this oxycontin-junkie to mock human suffering. This man is excrement, and proves once again that there is no floor for these thugs. No low is too low. As pained as I was to see Michael J. Fox's symptoms clearly worsening, I was filled with disgust to see the video of Rush flopping around. Have you no dignity, sir? Have you not one ounce of compassion in your soul?

I suppose the answer to that is "no".

While we're throwing the bums out in November, let's make sure to throw his fat ass out along with the others like him. This is beyond disgusting. It's totally pathological. If there is a hell, as these Christians contend, his oversized, wrinkly, pimpled, pink behind should be the first in line to fry there.

Sen. Specter seems rather disingenuous suggesting that he would have given money back from judges he recommended for the federal bench. Given the rubber stamp function his committee has served, the idea of money entering into this makes all the sense in the world and connects the dots better than any other explanation could besides a shared ideology. Under Arlen Specter, the judiciary committee has become little more than a formality for right wing ideological whack jobs to subvert the independence of the courts. Rather than a rubber stamp for Bush appointees, the Judiciary Committee should be as impartial and non-partisan as the judges that seek to be confirmed by it. So it's not surprising that when that process is compromised as this has been under Bush, the reasonable response is to follow the money. Good job of investigating by Salon and the CIR. Hopefully other news outlets will pick this up and run with it. Perhaps there's no law regulating this, but it's still influence peddling, and it's wrong, yet highly illustrative of the way the Bush White House does business.