Bad news for my future employment

Young GOP jobs hit hard on Capitol Hill

Time to embrace that "religious left" label, I suppose. Maybe Sojourners is hiring...

My view on Rick Warren for invocation

This is what I sent around to PoL Chat. I'm questioning my view a bit, as Mr. Gallagher alerted me to a 2004 letter from Pastor Warren suggesting his parishioners vote on the traditional life issues and gay marriage. I hold to most of this as a matter of perception though.

I'm under the impression most of you knew of Rick Warren before Proposition 8, so I don't need to go into his history so much. What I think I need to reinforce is that inside the spectrum of religious conservatism, Rick Warren has been considered a capital-L Liberal, and by no means part of the movement proper. He's a meagchurcher who has been buddy-buddy with media and liberal politicians since day one.This perception started to change when he asked about abortion and gay marriage at the Faith Forum (or whatever it was called) and then a little more when he spoke out on Proposition 8.

That liberalism has nothing to do with his actual stances, mind you. Many religious conservatives share Warren's economically liberal/social justice tendencies. Speaking for my own community, it's simply that they could not possibly fathom why he would be willing to take the focus of abortion and other 'hot-button' issues. The idea is, of course, that the pro-life movement only has a chance if all people of faith would speak with a united voice.

Warren has clearly moved away from that on some level. Recent quote :

“But to me it is kind of a charade in that people say ‘We believe abortions should be safe and rare,’” he added.

“Don’t tell me it should be rare. That’s like saying on the Holocaust, ‘Well, maybe we could save 20 percent of the Jewish people in Poland and Germany and get them out and we should be satisfied with that,’” Warren said. “I’m not satisfied with that. I want the Holocaust ended.”

So you read that, and you gasp, and you take offense and all that. Religious conservatives applaud the point, but many also take offense in a different way. They ask why you would still invite now-President-elect Obama to speak at your church if you believe that he is absolutely complicit in a holocaust of defenseless babies. But he did invite Obama, this person who is not only pro-choice, but voted against the Born-Alive Infants Protection Act in Illinois. Didn't matter. Rich Warren is still there to reach out on other issues, instead of sacrificing them all for the one and condemning those who disagree.

Dara, it's not that most Americans don't know these ideals exist (although the more conservative end is probably unnecessarily wary of government as a tool to accomplish them) it's just that they are absolutely subordinate to other concerns for the time being.

And by the way, may I remind everyone who (at least verball) opposes gay marriage besides Rick Warren? Barack Obama . Yes, he came out against Prop 8 in that video, but he did so just a few days before and very incoherently--and mind you, he's never given a reason for his belief on marriage outside of his religion. Is that acceptable? And if so, why do we have a political culture where religious language is acceptable as justification for refusing to recognize relationships between people but not for opposing the taking of an either potential or actual life?

After all that....I suppose hyper-progressive Rev. Jim Wallis would have been just fine too.

-Chris

There's good consumer culture and bad consumer culture.

And it's bad consumer culture when you trample someone to death in a rush for bargains, push the police officers trying to save the person, and knock around a pregnant woman for good measure.

I'm not even mentioning the double-homicide because that seems unconnected.

A Missed Opportunity on Gay Marriage for the Religious

I've been reading civil rights/equal protection among races Supreme Court opinions and discussions of those opinions for a decent portion of my day, and it strikes me: there are lots of times when the Court took a position that only one person really supported, because the majority side couldn't get a majority without them. Here I am thinking of the deal Chief Justice Warren made for gradual desegregation so as to get a unanimous Court.

Gay marriage is going to happen, if not everywhere right now. This bothers lots of religious people; not me. I'm made hopeful by seeing young people fight to extend marriage to everyone. But I feel too often like it's put only into rights language, that the rights that come from marriage and the right to marry is all that matters. If some religious people were willing to be the kingmakers for the pro-gay marriage side, we could get a lot of rhetoric out there about the value of openly committing yourself to a stable, monogamous relationship in the public sphere, and maybe even the value of sanctifying a sexual relationship rather than embracing an ideal of free love.

But no one wanted to make that deal. No one was willing to accept gays to put those lessons right next to social justice for children. And now the gay marriage debate is going to be ended by the next generation, who very well may end up viewing it as an important break with our religious traditions as opposed to their fulfillment.

Edit: Judge overturns Florida ban on adoption by gays. Thank you, God. How dare someone call themselves pro-life and vote for that.

Senator Stevens defeated

And about time too. That was about to become the biggest polling flip ever (Fivethirtyeight's model gave Senator-Elect Begich 100% odds of victory.)

Now we wait on Minnesota and Georgia. But at least I now know that if the Republicans hold the Democrats below 60, it's not because they successfully elected a felon.

Dear 46

Wrong.

Love,
45

For clarification's sake:
1) From 52 to 48 with Love is a photo gallery dedicated to post-election reconciliation. Neil Stevens of Redstate is being snarky about this. For the record, my submission (from a 48, of course) is page 2.
2. The 45 refers to the percentage of conservatives who are confident in President-Elect Obama. Believe it or not, many of us just thought McCain would be better. Conversely, the 46 is the percentage of conservatives who are not confident in the President-Elect.

Dichotomy: More hilarious than sad, more sad than hilarious?

I'm going to go with more hilarious than sad, considering it was rooted out within a week: A Senior Fellow at the Institute of Nonexistence

It was among the juicier post-election recriminations: Fox News Channel quoted an unnamed McCain campaign figure as saying that Sarah Palin did not know that Africa was a continent.

Who would say such a thing? On Monday the answer popped up on a blog and popped out of the mouth of David Shuster, an MSNBC anchor. “Turns out it was Martin Eisenstadt, a McCain policy adviser, who has come forward today to identify himself as the source of the leaks,” Mr. Shuster said.

Trouble is, Martin Eisenstadt doesn’t exist. His blog does, but it’s a put-on. The think tank where he is a senior fellow — the Harding Institute for Freedom and Democracy — is just a Web site. The TV clips of him on YouTube are fakes.

And it goes on like this. Granted, the hoax is very elaborate and intelligent. The problem is, there is nothing approaching a serious verification here. In fact, it seems that the producers of this hoax had more safeguards in place than they actually had to use.

This would seem to be an argument against blog culture in America--except that the Times actually admits sourcewatch.org had called out this source as fake months before, not to mention that Mr. "Eisenstadt"'s videos (like , which came out before the supposed leak) are pretty obviously comical.

UGH. On the plus side, I was listening to Denis Leary's "Asshole" when I pulled up Tristyn's post today, which made me feel better. Of course, the content of that post--that people can be banned from smoking in their own homes--makes me want to throw up.