MSNBC's Lawrence O'Donnell on Thursday went on a disgraceful tirade about how the Bible should have nothing to do with the upcoming inaugural festivities.
On Friday, Catholic League President Bill Donohue responded saying, "Given Obama’s ideology, perhaps it would make more sense for him to swear on Das Kapital."
Today's starter topic: As many conservatives are aware, people who are non-religious are a growing voting bloc in America. Writing at National Review, Betsy Woodruff has an interesting piece exploring the question of how the right can appeal to this demographic without having to compromise too much. Her verdict? It is possible with the right approach. Tell us your thoughts in the comments about this subject or anything else you would like.
Christmas: a season of generosity, good cheer, preparation for Christ’s birth – and a swarm of lawyers seeking to purge any mention of Christianity from the public square.
Every Christmas, the so-called secular community starts shrieking whenever any mention of religion is brought into the public eye. Lawyers successfully targeted a school’s performance of ‘A Charlie Brown Christmas.’ Even Christmas trees have too much religious content to suit the self-appointed censors.
When the word "God" becomes inappropriate in public schools, America really has ceased to exist.
Consider the story of a first-grade girl in West Marion, North Carolina, who had the word "God" stripped from a poem she wrote and was going to read at her school's Veterans Day assembly earlier this month.
Democrats picked up seven new House seats and expanded their caucus in the Senate by two seats, electing along the way the House's first Hindu member and the Senate's first Buddhist. But for liberal religion scholar Stephen Prothero, that's not good enough, because both chambers are still disproportionately too Protestant, with Republicans in particular looking too much like an "old-fashioned America" of yesteryear.
From Prothero's November 16 CNN Belief blog post (emphasis mine):
Stop the presses! Stop the presses!
On HBO's Real Time Friday, Democratic strategist James Carville - yes, I said Democratic strategist James Carville - scolded the Daily Beast's Andrew Sullivan for always blaming Republicans (video follows with transcript and commentary):
After offending religious Americans by appearing to boo God, the Democratic National Convention had the top ranking Catholic official in the country perform the closing Benediction Thursday night. Cardinal Timothy Dolan did the same for the Republicans last week in Tampa Bay, but those delegates didn’t seem to have a problem with a party platform that included God and Jerusalem.
The only networks respectful enough to show the prayer in its entirety without interruption was Fox News, Fox Business and C-SPAN. ABC, CNN, and PBS kept it in background while talking over it. MSNBC completely ignored it, cutting the audio feed to let their pundits share their opinions without distraction. CBS and NBC returned to local news affiliates as soon as he began.
[See video below. MP3 audio here.]
It's taken over four years for film director Paul Verhoeven to get anyone to turn his 2008 book "Jesus of Nazareth" into a movie, but numerous sources last week say he's finally done it.
Deadline reported last Tuesday that Muse Productions will produce the film claiming Jesus Christ was the product of Mary being raped by a Roman soldier:
Donald Trump on Monday had some harsh words for Bill Maher's incessant attacks on Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney's Mormonism.
Appearing on Fox News's On the Record, the real estate mogul said, "If a conservative Republican made a like statement about somebody else's religion, there’d be hell to pay. It’ll be all over the place. It would be the end of that person's career as you know it" (video follows with transcript and commentary):
In the war between religion and atheism, one atheist is already predicting victory. Biopsychologist Nigel Barber, writing for the Huffington Post, argued that atheism will overtake religion by the year 2038.
Barber’s asserted that “economic development is the key factor responsible for secularization.” His argument is simple: “The basic idea is that as people become more affluent, they are less worried about lacking for basic necessities, or dying early from violence or disease. In other words they are secure in their own existence. They do not feel the need to appeal to supernatural entities to calm their fears and insecurities.”
As NewsBusters reported last month, Comedy Central's Jon Stewart did a truly vile sketch a few weeks ago displaying a Nativity scene over a woman's vagina.
According to BuzzFeed, Delta Airlines has dropped its sponsorship of the Daily Show as a result [reader discretion advised: offensive graphic displayed below page break]:
HBO's Bill Maher took a lot of heat last week for calling Mormonism a cult that isn't a charity because it doesn't give to poor people.
Defending himself on Friday's Real Time, the host explained why he believes contributions to the Mormon Church and such things as the symphony and the ballet shouldn't be tax deductible but ignored that he supports federal funding of NPR (partial video follows with transcribed highlights and commentary):