in driving liberal Catholics out of the Church they will finish destroying the Church in America. Given the position the Church has taken on the use of condoms and its impact on AIDS alone, I'm not sure that would be a bad thing.

other forms of torture...like being beaten,or frozen, or hung by the arms for days? These methods were applied to many prisoners whose "guilt" was certainly in doubt (to say the least). Some of them had been picked up in random sweeps and others turned in for bounties by others who may have carried grudges or just wanted the money. Maybe some of them were enemy combatants, but which ones will be in many cases forever unknowable, let alone trial-worthy, not least since --- leaving aside the matter of inadmissible evidence as in the 5th Amendment --- a substantial number of many of them died either in "enhanced interrogation" or just captivity. That is DIED as in expired, croaked, kicked-the-bucket, six-feet-under dead. Or should we just kill them all and let God sort it out?

The Japanese general under whose command the Bataan Death March occurred was hung, even though he probably had little or no knowledge of the combination of cruelty, neglect and incompetence which caused the death of the prisoners in his care. He, as commander, was ultimately responsible.

As an opponent of capital punishment I wouldn't that far. I do believe that Cheney and Rumsfeld (and perhaps Bush) are conscienceless sociopaths who are beyond shame, so I wouldn't expect a condemnation to have much effect on them; but it might have some deterrent on others tempted to go the same route, and help to put our intelligence and protective services back under the control of grown-up professionals instead of sadists who think Jack Bauer is a real person, and that bad guys tell the truth under torture rather than saying whatever will get the pain to stop.

to speak of the "the transcendent and unknowable nature of the Almighty" at all. You can't even meaningfully say of the "unmknowable" that it is unknowable; it would would be like trying to enumerate infinity. (We can point to infinity, but bu definition we can't count it.) What is unknowable, it seems, admits no predicates of any sort.

And if Eagleton's God does exist in some sort of transcendent state, how are we finite and definitely non-transcendent beings to be in contact with (...) (no nouns allowed here!)?

This God would seem utterly irrelevant to all our real, Earthly concerns; this may be the God who delights the contemplative Plato (who also didn't have to work for his bread) but is a complete cipher to those who speak in tongues, live in dread of Satan and hellfire, or fly planes into tall buildings. And these, it seems to me, are the types with which Sam Harris, Hitchens, and Dawkins are rightfully concerned.

Long before I ever heard of Dawkins, concluded sadly that the existence of the God who has dominated Western history for 2000 years is most unlikely to exist. Albeit I own several Bibles (and read them) along with a long shelf of works dealing with religion in historical, archeological, and scholarly and theological terms; I daresay I know the Bible better than many a regular church-goer, not to mention the pulpit-pounders who seem limited to a few verses on homosexuality in Leviticus and the Revelation of John (a book which even Martin Luther was reluctant to include in his Scripture). Have the braying asses who want public prayer in the schools ever read the Sermon on the Mount?

BTW, the emotional and temperamental antecedents of Karl Marx are the OT prophets.

It must be fun to espouse the most extreme positions while all the while knowing (but never admitting aloud) that there is no chance whatever of seeing them become a concrete reality. It certainly makes for lively conversation at parties and tends to confound all of us who recognize that the real world neither conspires against us or conceals a secret plan that will give us all we ever dreamed of having.

The trouble comes when some social crisis gives some wild dreamer a chance to bring his fantasies to life. The refractory nature of reality is an annoying obstacle, and thus is born the world of "1984", in which, as the notorious anonymous Bush apparatchik said, the powerful create their own reality.

How to react to such drivel is a bit puzzling. In rational terms they should be ignored (except as in this article for a few laughs), but given the fact that fear-mongering and appeals to raw emotion will be ever effective, that might be a mistake. It has happened elsewhere, and it could happen here.

In reference to the "War on Drugs", it's more than a little annoying to see self-proclaimed Libertarians claiming credit for "discovering" how futile it has been. Many people, acquainted with the history of Prohibition, were aware of the ridiculously counter-productivity of that "war", long before and completely independent of any connection to crackpot Libertarianism even in its saner forms (if there be any such).

I lived in the Boston area for 35 years and only listened to Mr. Severin once, on the recommendation of a casual acquaintance about 7 years ago. This was during the run-up to the Iraq War. His suggestion was that we nuke Baghdad and that was enough for me (and enough to dissuade me from furthering the acquaintance as well). It was clear that this was a either brainless mouth or a breath-takingly cynical one feeding the worst kind of troll-mind in the pursuit of ratings. This latest foray sounds like a desperate attempt to continue that quest into the wilds of extreme-right-Rush-land and I'm glad it has apparently failed. There are pockets of insane bigotry everywhere, even in blue Massachusetts, but perhaps they are drying up as time takes its toll.

If the territory is not already staked out, Jay might try northwestern North Carolina, aka Foxx country.