Politics

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Party over for the Party faithful?

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After the 2004 election, the media freakout included claims that Christian conservatives were trying to turn the country into a theocracy or something. But liberal lions such as Sen. Ted Kennedy wondered whether Democrats could do a better job of reaching out to religious voters. And thus began key years of hard and effective work by Democrats. Data gathered during the 2006 and 2008 election showed that Democrats made tremendous gains in appealing to religious voters.


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Religion NIMBYs

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The Tennessean published a pretty good article from Bob Smietana over the weekend that dealt with a Muslim groups defeated mosque-permit application. The article discusses familiar themes of NIMBYism and is laced with Islamophobic sentiments from the most vocal opponents of the project:


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Firing squad as 'blood atonement?'

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Last month, after a Utah death-row inmate chose a firing squad as his form of execution, I complained about the pitiful coverage of the religion angle. In the comments section, reader Chas Clifton brought up an angle that I had not even considered:


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Don't ask, don't tell (about the chaplains)

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If you are interested in church-state separation issues, and you happened to pick up one of the big American newspapers this morning, that sound you are probably hearing is the theme from “Jaws.” Here’s the top of the A1 report from the Washington Post:


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And now for the rest of the story

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So the Detroit Free Press has a huge article about the Apostolic Visitation of women religious orders here in the United States. What’s that? Well, a year or two ago, the Vatican’s Congregation for Religious ordered a review of the Leadership Conference of Women Religious. That’s the group recently in the news for being involved in the 11th hour endorsement of health care legislation.


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Sexual sin vs. "misplaced" words

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Earlier this week we saw two sad stories involving political figures. It turned out that the Democratic nominee to be the next Connecticut Senator, Richard Blumenthal, had lied (or “misplaced” his words, as he put it) about whether he’d served in Vietnam. And a Republican Congressman from Indiana, Rep. Mark Souder, resigned upon revelation of an affair he’d had with a staffer.


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Kagan: Don't ask, don't tell

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Pretty much the moment Elena Kagan was nominated by President Obama to fill a vacancy on the Supreme Court, the questions started swirling. Few online seemed all that concerned with her politics or her understanding of constitutional law. “Elena Kagan husband” became a major Google trend, and it seemed a lot of people just wanted to know why Kagan, at the age of 50, was still single.


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Of jihads, lies and Calvin

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In my time as religion editor of The Oklahoman, a pastor of a large Baptist church wrote a book condemning Islam. After I reported on the book, I got a tip that the pastor had plagiarized large sections of the text and faked endorsements from syndicated columnist Cal Thomas and evangelist Franklin Graham. My investigation confirmed that the pastor — who claimed to be a leading expert on Islam — really was not.


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Getting the cold shoulder

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The Washington Post is known for puffy Style-section profiles of movers and shakers in the Washington area. A few years ago, we looked at the puffiest Washington Post Style profile I can recall. It was about Kate Michelman, the former head of NARAL Pro-Choice America. We learned from that piece that she organized sales to benefit Mexican farm workers as a teenager, makes food from scratch, reads a lot (“every word in every paragraph”), and loves to wash dishes. Here was a sample from that hagiography:


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