Why, oh why, must all religion stories be told through the prism of politics? It really gets tiring. For instance, there was this Washington Post piece last Sunday about how Pat Robertson had said something intemperate (I know! Stop the presses!) about Islam that reflected poorly on Virginia Governor-elect Bob McDonnell. Robertson hadn't made the comments with McDonnell or at a McDonnell event or in McDonnell campaign literature or anything like that. But he was a big donor to McDonnell's campaign and McDonnell attended a graduate school affiliated with Robertson and so the Post argued that he might have to respond to the remarks.

The story was published in another context, which is that the Post worked hard during the campaign to tarnish McDonnell, a Republican, as a particularly bad social conservative. Unfortunately for them, he won in an 18-point landslide over his Democratic opponent. But if the Post is going to start paying attention to the controversial affiliations of politicians, it's a good thing for everyone.

Okay, so CNN now picks up the story and we get this update, headlined "McDonnell won't disavow Robertson's Islam remarks":

Virginia Gov.-elect Bob McDonnell on Wednesday would not disavow Christian broadcaster Pat Robertson's recent claim that Islam is not a religion, but "a violent political system."

So McDonnell agrees with Robertson? Or, at the very least, doesn't disagree with him that Islam is not a religion but a violent political system? Well, not exactly. Here are the final two paragraphs of the story: